“Social Passivity: A Reflection on ‘Bad Faith’ from the Perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre” by Mohammad Reza Vaez Shahrestani

Social Passivity: A Reflection on “Bad Faith” from the Perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre

Mohammad Reza Vaez Shahrestani[1]

Imagine a young woman meeting a gentleman for the first time at a café. As a gesture of intimacy and closeness that has not yet developed, the man takes the woman's hand mid-conversation. The man acts this way in order to perhaps show his good feeling about being with that woman. However, the young woman does not want this physical contact, at least on the first meeting, but if she withdraws her hand from the man's, even gently, it will be interpreted as a refusal and a distance that may well affect the continuation of this relationship and might even ruin their next meeting. The best solution the woman finds is to pretend that she has not noticed the man's action! In fact, instead of choosing her type of reaction to the man's act, the young woman feigns a state as if she has not noticed this act of the man at all.[2]

The above situation is an example from Jean-Paul Sartre's book Being and Nothingness. Sartre believes that by pretending not to know and not choosing among the options before her, the woman shows herself as being beyond and independent of the situation she is in; that is, by absolving herself of the responsibility for choosing an option, she shows herself as being beyond the situation in which she must choose. Sartre considers this mental state of the woman to be “bad faith.”[3] In his view, bad faith is “a kind of not being honest with oneself and others.”[4] In fact, “bad faith” is an ontological and existential state in which the individual feigns the false in place of the true and convinces themselves that this false matter is the true and real one. Exactly like the young woman who, when placed in a situation of choice, leads herself astray with a false belief and pretends as if she has not noticed the man's action.[5]

In general, since the possibility of choosing among options brings responsibility and, consequently, the anguish arising from responsibility for the human being, the human tries to absolve themselves of this responsibility by not choosing and not to feel the weight of it on their shoulders. Sartre says in Notebooks for an Ethics that instead of choosing among the options before them, individuals choose slavery and by doing so allow themselves to be “treated like an object.”[6] In such a situation, the individual considers themselves as an object without will and without influence in society, from whom the possibility of inventing and changing affairs is out of reach, and they must merely accept everything. In fact, in such a state, human life lacks authenticity, and the meaning and values of life are empty for them. The human being is merely a marionette of powers, governments, and individuals behind the scenes. A clear example of this situation is a society in which most people or statesmen believe in conspiracy theory. They prefer to think that there are individuals or powers that are the main agents of the events taking place.

Now let us turn to our own Iranian society today. Most of us are living in a society where, in a broadly philosophical and specifically Sartrean sense, we not only consider ourselves condemned to existence and birth but are also firmly convinced that many options and choices have been predetermined for us by individuals, organizations, governments, powers, and external or internal forces; a human being who believes, not only on a subconscious level but also on a conscious and self-aware level, that they have no significant share in shaping their own essence and the totality of cultural, social, and political events in their society. Such a belief is precisely contrary to the view of Jean-Paul Sartre. For he believed that in any circumstance, the human being is condemned to choose among the options before them.[۷] Therefore, according to Sartre's view, the "bad faith" of such individuals lies in convincing themselves that they are nothing but helpless and impotent creatures for whom everything has been predetermined.[۸] In fact, with such a notion, they shirk the responsibility arising from their choices, and such a society will be devoid of any free and social action. The behavior of individuals in such a society, when placed in a situation where they must choose among options to shape a better future, resembles the behavior of that young woman who pretended not to notice the man's action. How many situations in society are there where we humans, when placed in them, must choose, but with a false belief, we consider ourselves above the situation and, independent of the situation, choose inaction and passivity.

Consider another example in this regard. Suppose many people in France, due to rising fuel prices, increased taxes, and the unemployment rate in the country, sympathize and agree with the Yellow Vests movement[۹] but, due to the possibility of peaceful street protests turning violent and being exploited by rioters, are unwilling to attend street protest gatherings. Meanwhile, there are other peaceful solutions, such as a strike, to make the voice of protest heard by the authorities, which neither requires presence in the streets—thereby providing an opportunity for rioters and leading to violence and the killing of innocent people or mercenaries—nor imposes a great cost on the supporters of this movement. Individuals simply need to not go to work for two days, except for vital jobs such as firefighting, hospitals, etc. In such a situation, the majority of the movement's supporters, who did not agree with street protests or feared them, are placed in a position where they must choose between striking or not striking and also accept responsibility for their choice. But among this multitude of Yellow Vest movement supporters, there are individuals who, by removing themselves from the situation, with "bad faith" and a lack of honesty with themselves and others, simply choose passivity, even though they always claimed in words to be in agreement with this movement and the existence of fundamental problems in the country. The reason for their passivity is that if they were to go on strike, imagining that problems might arise for themselves personally or for the whole society, they are unable to accept responsibility for its consequences; and if they consciously and explicitly say they are against the strike, they will face severe criticism from their co-religionists and like-minded peers, and such a choice also has unfavorable consequences for them. Therefore, the best path is to transcend the situation in question and resort to conspiracy theory or any other justification that entails no responsibility for them.

Ultimately, Sartre considered the experience of freedom, action towards new projects, the discovery of new worlds, and not being content with existing givens as the characteristics of a human being whose existence and life are authentic. In Sartre's words, every human choice can be an effort to confront a world in which evil, injustice, and oppression are some of its most important formative components.

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[۱] Researcher in Philosophy, University of Bonn, Germany

[۲] J. P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness / L'être et le néant (۱۹۴۳)

[۳] Bad faith/ Mauvaise foi

[۴] Babak Ahmadi, Sartre Who Wrote, Nashr-e Markaz, 4th Edition, 1390, Tehran, p. 243

[۵] Ibid.

[۶] Sartre, Cahiers pour une morale, p. 473

Quoted in Babak Ahmadi, Sartre Who Wrote, Nashr-e Markaz, 4th edition, 1390 [2011], Tehran

[۷] This paragraph is a direct quotation from another of the author’s notes on this subject. See: Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, translated by Mostafa Rahimi, Niloufar Publications, 14th printing, Winter 1391 [2013], Tehran, p. 40

[۸] Babak Ahmadi, Sartre Who Wrote, Nashr-e Markaz, 4th edition, 1390 [2011], Tehran, p. 244

[۹] Yellow Vests Movement : (Le Mouvement des Gilets jaunes) is a protest movement centered in Paris, France, which quickly spread to other countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Iraq, and began on Saturday, November 17, 2018. The Yellow Vests caused traffic chaos by blocking roads. These demonstrations arose in protest against rising fuel prices and taxes.

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