In existentialism, bad faith (French: mauvaise foi) is the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals act inauthentically, by yielding to the external pressures of society to adopt false values and disown their innate freedom as sentient human beings.
A critical claim in existentialist thought is that individuals are always free to make choices and guide their lives towards their own chosen goal or "project".
For instance, even an empire's colonized victims possess choices: to submit to rule, to negotiate, to commit suicide, to resist nonviolently, or to counter-attack.
Although external circumstances may limit individuals, called facticity, they cannot force a person to follow one of the remaining courses over another.
For Jean-Paul Sartre, to claim that one amongst many conscious possibilities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, "I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family") is to assume the role of an object in the world, not a free agent, but merely at the mercy of circumstance (a being-in-itself that is only its own facticity, i.e., it "is" inside itself, and acts there as a limitation).
His voice has an eagerness to please; he carries food rigidly and ostentatiously; "his movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid".
She ignores the obvious sexual implications of her date's compliments to her physical appearance, but accepts them instead as words directed at her as a human consciousness.
As he takes her hand, she lets it rest indifferently in his, "neither consenting nor resisting – a thing"[6] – refusing either to return the gesture or to rebuke it.
However, Leslie Stevenson believes this characterization of the waiter itself as being an example of bad faith is a misrepresentation of Sartre's intentions.
[8] Simone de Beauvoir described three main types of women acting in bad faith: the Narcissist who denies her freedom by construing herself as a desirable object; the Mystic, who invests her freedom in an absolute; and the Woman in Love, who submerges her identity in that of her male object.
One convinces oneself, in some sense, to be bound to act by external circumstance in order to escape the anguish of freedom.
Taking on the burden of personal accountability in all situations may be an intimidating proposition – by pointing out the freedom of the individual, Sartre seeks to demonstrate that the social roles and moral systems people adopt protect them from being morally accountable for their actions.