No More Learning

Let us take an example: A homosexual frequently has an intolerable feeling of guilt, and his whole existence is determined in relation to this feeling. One will readily foresee that he is in bad faith. In fact it frequently happens that this man, while recognizing his homosexual inclination, while avowing each and every particular misdeed which he has committed, refuses with all his strength to consider himself "a paederast. " His case is always "different," peculiar; there enters into it something of a game,
of chance, of bad luck; the mistakes are all in the past; they are explained by a certain conception of the beautiful which women can not satisfy; we should see in them the results of a restless search, rather than the manifes- tations of a deeply rooted tendency, etc. , etc. Here is assuredly a man in bad faith who borders On the comic since, acknowledging all the facts which are imputed to him, he refuses to draw from them the conclusion which they impose. His friend, who is his most severe critic, becomes irritated with this duplicity. The critic asks only one thing-and perhaps then he will show himself indulgent: that the guilty one recognize himself as guilty, that the homosexual declare frankly-whether humbly or boast- fully matters little-"I am a paederast. " W e ask here: Who is in bad faith? The homosexual or the champion of sincerity?
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The homosexual recognizes his faults, but he struggles with all his strength against the crushing view that his mistakes constitute for him a destiny. He does not wish to let himself be considered as a thing. He has an obscure but strong feeling that an homosexual is not an homosexual as this table is a table or as this red-haired man is red-haired. It seems to him that he has escaped from each mistake as Soon as he has posited it and recognized it; he even feels that the psychic duration by itself cleanses him from each misdeed, constitutes for him an undetermined future, causes him to be born anew. Is he wrong? Does he not recognize in him- self the peculiar, irreducible character of human reality? His attitude includes then an undeniable comprehension of truth. But at the same time he needs this perpetual rebirth, this constant escape in order to live; he must constantly put himself beyond reach in order to avoid the terrible judgment of collectivity. Thus he plays on the word being. He would be right actually if he understood the phrase, "I am not a paederast" in the sense of "I am not what I am. " That is, if he declared to himself, "To the extent that a pattern of conduct is defined as the conduct of 'a paederast and to the extent that I have adopted this conduct, I am a paederast. But to the extent that human reality can not be finally defined by patterns of conduct, I am not one. " But instead he slides surreptitiously towards a different connotation of the word "being. " He understands "not being" in the sense of "not-being-in-itself. " He lays elaim to "not being a paeder- ast" in the sense in which this table is not an inkwell. He is in bad faith.
But the champion of sincerity is not ignorant of the transcendence of human reality, and he knows how at need to appeal to it for his own advantage. He makes use of it even and brings it up in the present argu- ment. Does he not wish, first in the name of sincerity, then of freedom, that the homosexual reflect on himself and acknowledge himself as an homosexual? Does he not let the other understand that such a confes- sion will win indulgence for him? What does this mean if not that the man who will acknowledge himself as an homosexual will no longer be the same as the homosexual whom he acknowledges beiag and that he will escape. into the region of freedom and of good will? The critic asks the man then to be what he is in order no longer to be what he is. It is the profound meaning of the saying, "A sin confessed is half pardoned. " The critic demands of the guilty one that he constitute himself as a thing, pre- cisely in order no longer to treat him as a thing. And this contradiction is constitutive of the demand of sincerity. Who can not see how offensive to the Other and how reassuring for me is a statement such\as, "He's just a paederast," which removes a disturbing freedom ,from a trait and which aims at henceforth constituting all the acts of the Other as conse- quences following strictly from his essence. That is actually what the critic is demanding of his victim-that he constitute himself as a thing, that he should entrust his freedom to his friend as a fief, in order that
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the friend should return it to him subsequently-like a suzerain to his
vassal. The champion of sincerity is in bad faith to the degree that in order to reassure himself, he pretends to judge, to the extent that he demands that freedom as freedom. constitute itself as a thing. We have here only one episode in that battle to the death of consciousnesses which Hegel calls "the relation of the master and the slave. " A person appeals to another and demands that in the name of his nature as consciousness should radically destroy himself as consciousness, but while making this appeal he leads the other to hope for a rebirth beyond this destruction. Very well, SOmeone wiII say, but our man is abusing sincerity, playing one side against the other. W e should not look for sincerity in the relation of the Mit-scin but rather where it is pure-in the relations of a person with himself. But who can not see that objective sincerity is constituted in the same way? Who can not see that the sincere man constitutes him- selfas a thing in order to escape the condition of a thing by the same act of sincerity? The man who confesses that he is evil has exchanged his disturbing "frcedom-for-evil" for an inanimate character of evil; he is evil, he clings to himself, he is what he is. But by the same stroke, he escapes from that thing, since it is he who contemplates it, since it de- pends on him to maintain it under his glance or to let it collapse in an infinity of particular acts. He derives a merit from his sincerity, and the de- serving man is not the evil man as he is evil but as he is beyond his evilness. At the same time the evil is disarmed since it is nothing, save on the plane of determinism, and since in confessing it, I posit my freedom in respect
to it; my future is virgin; everything is allowed to me.
Thus the essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of
bad faith since the sincere man constitutes himself as what he is in order not to be it. This explains the truth recognized by all that one can fall into bad faith through being sincere. As Valery pointed out, this is the case with Stendhal. Total, constant sincerity as a constant effort to adhere to oneself is by nature a constant effort to dissociate oneself from oneself. A person frees himself from himself by the very act by which he makes himself an object for himself. To draw up a perpetual inventory of what one is means constantly to redeny oneself and to take refuge in a sphere where one is no longer anything but a pure, free regard. The goal of bad faith, as we said, is to put oneself out of reach; it is an escape. Now we see that we must use the same terms to define Sincerity. What does this mean?
In the final analysis the goal of sincerity and the goal of bad faith are not so different. To be sure, there is a sincerity which bears on the past and which docs not concern us here; I am sincere if I confess having had this pleasure or that intention. We shall see that if this sincerity is possible, it is because in his fall into thepast, the being of man is constituted as a being-in-itself. But here our concern is only with the sincerity which aims at itself in present immanence. What is its goal? To bring me to confess
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to myself what I am in order that I may finally coincide with my being; in a word, to cause myself to be, in the mode of the in-itself, what I am in the mode of "not being what I am:" Its assumption is that fundamentally I am already, in the mode of the in-itself, what I have to be. Thus we find at the base of sincerity a continual game of mirror and reflection, a perpet- ual passage from the being which is what it is, to the being which is not what it is and inversely from the being which is not what it is to the being which is what it is. And what is the goal of bad faith? T o cause me to be what I am, in the mode of "not being what one is," or not to be what I am in the mode of "being what one is. " We find here the same game of mirrors. In fact in order for me to have an intention of sincerity, I must at the outset simultaneously be and not be what I am. Sincerity does not assign to me a mode of being or a particular quality, but in relation to that quality it aims. at making me pass from one mode. of being to another mode of being. This second mode of being, the ideal of sincerity, I am pre- vented by nature from attaining; and at the very moment when I struggle to attain it, I have a vague prejudicative comprehension that I shall not
attain it. But all the same, in order for me to be able to conceive an inten- tionin bad faith, I must have such a nature that within my being I escape from my being. If I were sad or cowardly in the way in which this inkwell is an inkwell, the possibility of bad faith could not even be conceived. Not only should I be unable to escape from my being; I could not even imagine that I could escape from it. But if bad faith is possible by virtue of a simple project, it is because so far as my being is concerned, therc is no difference between being and non-being if I am cut off from my project.
Bad faith is possible only because sincerity is conscious of missing its goal inevitably, due to its very nature. I can try to apprehend myself as "not being cowardly," when I am so, only on con,dition that the "being cowardly" is itself "in question" at the very moment when it exists, on condition that it is itself one question, that at the very moment whcn I wish to apprehend it, it escapes me on all sides and annihilates itself. The condition under which I can attempt 3n effort in bad faith is that in one sense, I am not this coward which I do not wish to be. But if I were not cowardly in the simple nlode of not-being-what-one-is-not, I would be "in good faith" by declaring that I am not cowardly. Thus this inappre-
hensible coward is evanescent; in order for me not to be cowardly, I must in SOme way also be cowardly. That does not mean that I must be "a little" cowardly, in the sense that "a little" signifies "to a certain degree cowardly-and not cowardly to a certain degree. " No. I must at once both be and not be totally and in all respects a coward. Thus in this case bad faith requires that I should not be what I am; that is, that there be an imponderable difference separating being from non-being in the mode of being of human reality.
But bad faith is not restricted to denying the qualities which I possess,
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to not seeing-Fhe being which I am. It attempts also to constitute myself as being what I am not. It apprehends me positively as courageous when I am not so. And that is possible, once again, only if I am what I am not; that is, if non-being in me does not have being even as non-being. Of course necessarily I am not courageous; otherwise bad faith would not be bad faith. But in addition my effort in bad faith must include the ontological comprehension that even in my usual being what I am, I am not it really and that there is no such difference between the being of "being-sad," for example-which I am in the mode of not being what I am -and the "non-being" of not-being-courageous which I wish to hide from myself. Moreover it is particularly requisite tharthe very negation of being should be itself the object of a perpetual nihilation, that the very meaning of "non-being" be perpetually in question in human reality. If I were not courageous in the way in which this inkwell is not a table; that is, if I were isolated in my cowardice, propped firmly against it, incapable of putting it in relation to its opposite, if I wcre not capable of determining
myself as cowardly--":that is, to deny courage to myself and thereby to escape my cowardice in the very moment that I posit it-if it were not on principle impossible for me to coincide with my not-being-courageous as well as with my being-courageous-then any project of bad faith wouid be prohibited me. Thus in order for-bad faith to be possible, sincerity itself must be in bad faith. The condition of the possibility for bad faith is that human reality, in its most immediate being, in the intra- structure of the pre-reflective cogito, must be what it is not and not be what it is.
III. THE "FAITH" OF BAD FAITH
WE have indicated for the moment only those conditions which render bad faith conceivable, the structures of being which permit us to form concepts of bad faith. W e can not limit ourselves to these considerations; we have not yet distinguished bad faith from falsehood. The two-faced concepts which we have described would without a doubt be utilized by a liar to discountenance his questioner, although their two-faced quality being established on the being of man and not on some empirical circum- stance, can and ought to be evident to all. The true problem of bad faith stems evidently from the fact bad faith is faith. It can not be either a cynical lie or certainty-if certainty is the intuitive possession of the object. But if we take belief as meaning the adherence of being to its object when the object is not given or is given indistinctly, then bad faith is belief; and the essential problem of bad faith is a problem of belief.
How can we believe by bad faith in the concepts which we forge ex- pressly to persuade ourselves? We must note in fact that the project of
r
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bad faith must be itself in bad faith. I am not only in bad faith at the end of my effort when I have constructed my two-faced concepts and when I have persuaded myself. In truth, I have not persuaded myself; to the extent that I could be so persuaded, I have always been so. And at the very mo- ment when I was disposed to put myself in bad faith, I of necessity was in bad faith with respect to this same disposition. For me to have repre- sented it to myself as bad faith would have been cynicism; to believe it sincerely innocent would have been in good faith. The decision to be in bad faith does not dare to speak its name; it believes itself and does not believe itself in bad faith; it believes itself and does not believe itself in good faith. It is this which from the upsurge of bad faith, determines
the later attitude and, as it were, the Weltanschauung of bad faith.
Bad faith does not hold the norms and criteria of truth as they are accepted by the critical thought of gOCld faith. What it decides first, in fact, ,is the nature of truth. With bad faith a truth appears, a method of thinking, a type of being which is like that of objects; the ontological characteristic of the world of bad faith with which the subject suddenly surrounds himself is this: that here being is what it is not, and is not what it is. Consequently a peculiar type of evidence appears; non-persuasive evidence. Bad faith apprehends evidence but it is resigned in advance to not being fulfilled by this evidence, to not being persuaded and trans- fonned into good faith. It makes itself humble and modest; it is not igno- rant, it. says, that faith is decision and that after each intuition, it must decide and wi11 what it is. Thus bad faith in its primitive project and in its coming into the world decides on the exact nature of its requirements. It stands forth in the finn resolution not to demand too much, to count itself satisfied when it is barely persuaded, to force itself in decisions to adhere to uncertain truths. This original project of bad faith is a decision in bad faith on the nature of faith. Let us understand clearly that there is no question of a reflective, voluntary decision, but of a spontaneous determination of our being. One puts oneself in bad faith as one goes to sleep and one is in bad faith as one dreams. Once this mode of being has been realized, it is as difficult to get out of it as to wake oneself up; bad faith is a type of being in the world, like waking or dreaming, which by itself tends to perpetuate itself, although its structure is of the metastable type. But bad faith is conscious of its structure, and it has taken precautions by deciding that the metastable structure is the struc- ture of being and that non-persuasion is the structure of all convictions. It
follows that if bad faith is faith and if it includes in its original project its? own negation (it determines itself to be not quite convinced in order to convince itself that I am what I am not), then to start with, a faith which wishes itself to be not quite convinced must be possible. What are the conditions for the possibility of such a faith?
I believe that my friend Pierre feels friendship for me. I believe it in
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good faith. I believe it but I do not have for it any self-evident intuition, for the nature of th. e object does not lend itself to intuition. I believe it; that is, I allow myself to give in to all impulses to trust it; I decide to be-
lieve in it, and to maintain myself in this decision; I conduct myself, finally, as if I were certain of it-and all this in the synthetic unity of one and the same attitude. This which I define as good faith is what Hegel would call theimmediate. It is simple faith. Hegel would demonstrate at once that the immediate calls for mediation and that belief by becoming belief for Itself, passes to the state of non-belief. If I believe that my friend Pierre likes me, this means that his friendship appears to me as the meaning of all his acts. Belief is a particular consciousness of the meaning of Pierre's acts. But if I know that I believe, the belief appears to me as pure sub- jective determination without external correlative. This is what makes the very word "to believe" a term utilized indifferently to indicate the un- wavering. firmness of belief ("My God, I believe in you") and its character as disarmed and strictly subjective. ("Is Pierre my friend? I do not know; I believe so. ") But the nature of consciousness is such that in it the medi- ate and the immediate are one and the same being. To believe is to know that one believes, and to know that one believes is no longer to believe. Thus to believe is not to believe any longer because that is only to believe
-this in the unity of one and the same non-thetic self-consciousness. To be sure, we have here forced the description of the phenomenon by de- signating it with the word to know; non-thetic consciousness is not to know. But it is in its very translucency at the origin of all knowing. Thus the' non-thetic consciousness (of) believing is destructive of belief. But at the same time the very law of the pre-reflective cogito implies that the being of believing ought to be the consciousness of believing.
Thus belief is a being which questions its own being, which can realize itse1fonly in its destruction, which can manifest itself to itself only by denying itself. It is a being for which to be is to appear? and to appear is to deny itself. T o believe is not-to-believe. W e see the reason for it; the being of consciousness is to exist by itself, then to make itself be and thereby to pass byond itself. In this sense consciousness. is perpetually escaping itself, belief becomes non-belief, the immediate becomes mediation, the absolute becomes relative, and the relative becomes absolute. The idealof good faith (to believe what one believes) is, like that of sincerity (to be what one is), an ideal of being-in-itself. Every belief is a belief that falls short; one never wholly believes what one believes. Consequently the primitive project of bad faith is only the utilization of this self-destruction of the fact of consciousness. If every belief in good faith is an impossible belief, then there is a place for every impossible belief. My inability to believe that I am courageous will not discourage me since every belief involves not quite believing. I shall define this impossible belief as my belief. To be sure, I shall not be able to hide from myself that I believe
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in order not to believe and that I do not believe in order to believe. But the subtle, total annihilation of bad faith by itself can not surprise me; it exists at the basis of all faith. What is it then? At the moment when I wish to believe myself courageous I know that I am a coward. And this certainly would come to destroy my belief. But first, I am not anymore courageous than cowardly, if we are to understand this in the mode of be- ing of the-in-itself. In the second place, I do not know that I am courage- ous; such a view of myself can be accompanied only by belief, for it surpas- ses pure reflective certitude. In the third place, it is very true that bad faith does not succeed in believing what it wishes to believe. But it is precisely as the acceptance of not believing what it believes that it is bad faith. Good faith wishes to flee the "not-believing-what-one-believes" by finding refuge in being. Bad faith flees being by taking refuge in "not-believing- what-one-believes. " It has disarmed all beliefs in advance-those which it would like to take hold of and, by the same stroke, the others, those which it wishes to flee. In willing this self-destruction of belief, from which science escapes by searching for evidence, it ruins the beliefs which are opposed to it, which reveal themselves as being only belief. Thus we can better understand the original phenomenon of bad faith.
In bad faith there is no cynical lie nor knowing preparation for deceitful concepts. But the first act of bad faith is to flee what it can not flee, to flee what it is. The very project of flight reveals to bad faith an inner disintegra- tion in the heart of being, and it is this disintegration which bad faith wishes to be. In truth, the two immediate . attitudes which we can take in the face of our being are conditioned by the very nature of this being and its immediate relation with the in-itself. Good faith seeks to flee the inner disintegration of my being in the direction of the in-itself which it should be and is not. Bad faith seeks to flee the in-itself by means of the inner disintegration of my being. But it denies this very disintegration as it denies that it is itself bad faith. Bad faith seeks by means of "not-being- what-one-is" to escape from the in-itself which I am not in the mode of being what one is not. It denies itself as bad faith and aims at the in-itself which I am not in the mode of "not-being-what-one-is-not. "ll If bad faith is possible, it is because it is an immediate, permanent threat to every project of the human being; it is because consciousness conceals in its being a permanent risk of bad faith. The origin of this risk is the fact that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what it is not and not to be what it is. In the light of these remarks we can now approach the ontological study of consciousness, not as the totality of the human being, but as the instantaneous nucleus of this being.
. 9 If it is indifferent whether one is in good or in bad faith, because bad faith reappre- hends good faith and slides to the very origin of the project of good faith, that does not mean that we can not radically escape bad faith.
But this supposes a self-recovery of being which was previouslycorrupted. This self-recovery we shall call authenticity, the description of which has no place here.