The Illusion of Identity
Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most influential existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, believed that human beings are condemned to be free. At first glance, this sounds empowering—freedom as the core of human existence. But Sartre meant something more unsettling. He believed that with freedom comes the full weight of responsibility. There is no divine script, no predetermined essence, no external authority to dictate who we are. As a result, we are not just free—we are responsible for becoming ourselves. And that’s precisely where many of us retreat into what Sartre calls bad faith.
Bad faith (mauvaise foi) is not simple lying. In fact, Sartre distinguishes it from deliberate deceit. A person who lies to another still knows the truth internally. But in bad faith, the deception is directed inward. It’s the lie we tell ourselves to avoid the anxiety of freedom, the discomfort of choice, and the weight of self-definition.
The Waiter and the Escape from Freedom
Sartre illustrates bad faith through a famous example: the café waiter. The waiter performs his role with exaggerated precision—too graceful, too rehearsed, too mechanical. He is, in Sartre’s view, trying to convince both himself and others that he is a waiter in essence. But of course, he is not a waiter in the way that a stone is a stone. He is a person—a being-for-itself—who happens to be performing the role of a waiter. To mistake that role for his total identity is to fall into bad faith. He is trying to become a fixed thing, something with a defined essence, to escape the anxiety of freedom.
This is bad faith: the attempt to deny one's own transcendence, to see oneself as fixed, defined, and passive, rather than as a constantly unfolding project. In existentialist terms, it's an effort to become a thing—a being-in-itself—instead of acknowledging that we are always becoming.
Why Bad Faith Is So Tempting
Bad faith is not limited to café waiters. It's a universal temptation. When someone says, “That’s just who I am,” or “I had no choice,” or “People like me don’t do that,” they may be speaking from bad faith. These statements reduce the fluid, dynamic nature of human existence into something static and comfortable. They let us off the hook.
Freedom is terrifying. If we are truly free, then we cannot blame our upbringing, our past, our circumstances, or even our nature for the choices we make today. And that’s a hard truth to live with. So, we invent convenient narratives. We become our job title. We become our reputation. We become someone else’s expectations. All to avoid facing the radical freedom—and therefore radical responsibility—that comes with being human.
Authenticity as the Antidote
For Sartre, the alternative to bad faith is not a simple embrace of freedom but authenticity. Authenticity involves acknowledging the fluidity of the self and the permanent possibility of transformation. It means accepting that we are responsible not only for what we do but for what we become. It also means resisting the urge to collapse into rigid identities or social scripts.
Authenticity does not imply moral perfection or a life free of compromise. Rather, it requires an honest engagement with our freedom—an ongoing recognition that we are not victims of circumstance, nor the sum total of our past decisions. We are, as Sartre famously said, condemned to be free—and through that freedom, we continually recreate ourselves.
Bad Faith Today
In today’s world, bad faith is as relevant as ever. We live in a culture saturated with roles, brands, labels, and categories. We curate identities online, fall into political echo chambers, and absorb prepackaged narratives about who we are supposed to be. It's easy to adopt a persona and let it do the living for us. It’s easy to confuse visibility with authenticity.
But Sartre’s challenge is still there: Are you being honest with yourself? Or are you hiding behind a role?
We may not be waiters in Parisian cafés, but we all perform. The key is not to abandon the roles we play, but to remember that we are always more than any role. We are freedom in motion. And every moment asks us whether we will face that freedom honestly—or flee from it into comforting lies.
