Bad faith check

In 1943, in occupied Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre published Being and Nothingness. Its most famous scene takes place in a café.

Sartre watches a waiter whose movements are a little too precise. He bends a little too eagerly and balances his tray a little too perfectly. He is playing at being a waiter, as if "waiter" were simply what he is, the way a table is a table. Sartre called this bad faith: pretending to be a fixed thing, so that you don't have to face the fact that you are free.

Bad faith usually sounds reasonable. It hides in a few familiar phrases:

• "I have to": "I have to answer emails at night."
• "I can't": "I can't say no to my mother."
• "That's just how I am": "I'm just not a confident person."
• "Everyone does it": "That's how this industry works."

Each turns a choice into a fact. That brings relief, because a fact isn't your responsibility. It also costs you, because a fact can't be changed.

Bad faith runs the other way too. Pretending you're completely free when you aren't, "I could quit tomorrow if I wanted to," with rent due and no savings, ignores real limits. Sartre's point is honesty in both directions: about the constraints, and about the choices left inside them.

This isn't about blame. Owning a choice isn't the same as saying everything that happened is your fault.

Marcus, a junior accountant, works most Saturdays. When his girlfriend asks why, he says: "I don't have a choice. Everyone at my firm does it, and I'm just not someone who can push back. It's how this industry works." He resents the weekends, and lately he resents her for asking.