Free to Choose or Not to Choose?

            This week in class we focused on Jean Paul Sartre and his beliefs. A portion of our reading centered on him addressing bad faith and the patterns of it. In class, we mentioned the concept of lying to oneself and whether doing so is actually possible. Sartre claims that a person has to know the truth to make the lie. Ultimately, we argued back and forth whether it was actually possible to tell an untruth to ourselves considering we already know what the truth is. Of course, some deemed it possible to coax ourselves into believing the story but it does not negate the fact that we know what the truth is and cannot literally “lie” to ourselves. It was also suggested that in order to possibly achieve this (“lying to oneself”) one would have to have a metastable relationship with him/herself.  Furthermore, we talked about what Sartre considers the patterns of bad faith in which he provided three scenarios, but we only discussed two in class. The first involved a waiter in a café; Sartre says that if you ask a waiter why he acts the way he does while working (being very polite, etc), he would respond by saying it’s his job to do so. This suggests that the waiter is fleeing his freedom or attempting to leave transcendence in order to have facticity.  The second instance involves a woman on a date. She tries to transcend the situation by thinking she is choosing not to choose when presented with the choice of accepting and welcoming her partner’s advances or to reject them. In this case, the teacher mentioned that she was not being what she is in the mode of being. Ultimately, I gathered that while we may believe we have no freedom in certain situations, we actually do whether it includes conforming to the expectations set for us on the job or opting to kindly (or coldly) reject another person’s advances. Even choosing not to answer a question on a test or a survey is still making a conscious decision not to act.