This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel War Burton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com. If you're listening to this and you're a student or a farmer or perhaps an engineer or a soldier,

then you may feel that your role confers certain obligations upon you.

Most students, for example, believe they're obliged to attend lectures, write essays and

so forth. That's what they did in the previous semester, and that's what they must do in the next

one. But Jean-Paul Sartre, the 20th century French existentialist philosopher, might accuse them of bad faith.

Bad faith is to condition people suffer when they deny to themselves that they're radically free,

when they think that their past determines their future.

Such people are, as it were, making a metaphysical mistake, turning themselves into inert objects

rather than necessarily free beings, beings condemned to having

to make choices.

Sartre specialist Professor Sebastian Gardner exhibited his freedom by choosing to speak to philosophy bites.

Sebastian Gardner, welcome to philosophy bites. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

We're going to talk about Jean-Paul Sautra's notion of bad faith. To begin with, can we just say what he means by bad faith?

Well, the concept of bad faith is introduced in being a nothingness as a concept that applies to describes various forms of behavior that

such illustrates in various ways.

So we have these very well-known vignettes or anecdotal little illustrations of individuals who are said to be in bad faith.

And bad faith is a condition, it's an existential condition.

The more familiar concept that appears to correspond to it and does indeed map some of the features that we see in individuals who are said to be in bad faith is the concept of self-deception.

And one of the most famous examples he uses is this example of a cafe waiter who he says is in bad faith.

What's that all about?

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