Freudian psychoanalysis Freudian psychoanalysis answers how bad faith self-deception is made possible by postulating an unconscious dimension of our being that is amoral, whereas the
conscious is in fact regulated by morality, law, and custom, accomplished by what Freud calls
repression. The true desires of the unconscious express themselves as
wish fulfillment in dreams, or as an ethical position unconsciously taken to satisfy the wishes of the unconscious mind. A person who is not lying to himself is
authentic. "Authenticity" is being faithful to internal rather than external ideas. Bad faith in ethics may be when an unethical position is taken as ethical, and justified by appeal to being forced to that belief as an excuse, e.g., by God or by that person's natural disposition due to genetics, even though facts disconfirm that belief and
honesty would require it.
Phenomenology plays a role leading to discussions of bad faith. It has a role in ethics by an analysis of the structure of
will, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in
empathy and
sympathy). Phenomenologist
Heidegger discussed care,
conscience, and
guilt, moving to "authenticity", which in turn led to the
feminism of
Simone de Beauvoir and the
existentialism of
Jean-Paul Sartre, both based on phenomenology's considerations of authenticity and its role in bad faith. Sartre analyzed the logical problem of "bad faith" as it relates to authenticity, and developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in
good faith. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir developed ideas about bad faith into existentialism, using the concepts of bad faith and "authenticity" in the ethics of belief. In
Being and Nothingness, Sartre begins his discussion of bad faith by raising the question of how bad faith self-delusion is possible. Jean-Paul Sartre called the belief that there is something intrinsically good in itself, which is inherent in the world as absolute value and is discoverable by people, the "
spirit of seriousness", which he argued leads to bad faith. He argued that people fall into the spirit of
seriousness because they take their values too seriously, and forget that values are contingent, chosen and assigned subjectively. In Sartre's words, "the spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as
transcendent givens, independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of 'desirable' from the
ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution."
Psychology Psychologists have proposed answers as to how bad faith self-delusion can be possible. A "tropism" is an action done without conscious thought. While self-deception may be a tropism, not consciously done, it may be guided by "projects" one may set for one's life, such as a desire to get into heaven, or for personal pleasure, wealth, or power. For example, a creationist has a project to get into heaven, and a racist with feelings of personal inadequacy may have a project to be superior or to have power over some others. The project may create self-deception without conscious thought, as a tropism creates action without conscious thought. A project may be selfish, and overwhelm reason from facts, though its consequences are not directly intentional. But the project itself may be intentionally sought, and in a selfish way, whence bad faith arises, as a result of selfish or bad intention in choice of project. A
homunculus is a little person (or map of the person) inside a person, and homuncularism is the theory in psychology that there are subsystems of the mind performing different operations; the homuncularist answer to the question as to how bad faith is possible is that one such subunit deceives the other. In
humanistic psychology, recognition of bad faith in one's own acts by the actor results in
guilt and
regret. Psychologists have examined the role of bad faith in psychologists overseeing and directing
torture, when they know that it is wrong, e.g., in the
Guantanamo detention center.
Truth values There is controversy as to whether propositions made in bad faith are true or false, such as when a hypochondriac has a complaint with no physical symptom.
In pseudosciences Bad faith can exist not only in an individual, but in entire systems of knowledge. Within the
pseudoscience of racial eugenics, bad faith is proposed to be a motivator for self-defensive action against an objectified race of people to justifiably uphold a desire for racial supremacy; e.g., a minority group of whites who believe that blacks are inferior in bad faith to motivate the preservation of their white-race differences, while their faith is motivated in fear of elimination from within a volatile racial environment. Bad faith
racial supremacist's beliefs are studied in
African American studies. In Nazi Germany, companies knowingly competed for the manufacture of efficient ovens for the concentration camps to make money with the manufacturers justified in their actions by self-deception, but
intentionally so as to be in bad faith. A person can intentionally self-deceive by being inauthentic or
insincere, as the Nazis organization did in holding their beliefs to justify their
eugenics and
genocide.
Religion Jean-Paul Sartre described one kind of bad faith as claiming a direction from a non-existent deity or using religious authority to take unethical positions or espouse untrue beliefs. The
Catholic Church does not consider everyone with heretical views to have bad faith: for example, people who earnestly seek the truth and lead exemplary lives. Persons practicing
Zen claim not to be subject to the "bad faith" in "self-deception", since they do not
explain a motivation for action, as a
rationalist would. A rationalist must rationalize an irrational desire that is actually rooted in the body and the unconscious as if it were not.
Analytical philosophy and the error theory of moral statements For philosophers in the Anglo-American
analytical tradition, statements involving moral values have caused concern because of their similarity to statements about objects and events in the physical world. Compare: • Littering is commonplace in Chiang Mai • Littering is wrong Both have the same grammatical structure, but the way we might verify the first is quite different from the way we might want to verify the second. We can verify the first statement by observations made in the physical world, but according to
David Hume, no amount of physical world observation can verify statements of the second type. Hume's view is summarized as "you can not derive 'ought' from 'is. Whereas statements of the first type must be true or false, some philosophers have argued that moral statements are neither true nor false.
Richard M. Hare, for example, argues that moral statements are in fact imperatives (commands). For him, the statement "littering is wrong" means "do not litter", and "do not litter" is neither true nor false. In sharp contrast to people like Hare,
J.L. Mackie contended that moral statements are false. Mackie's view discomforts
Crispin Wright who says that it "relegates moral discourse to bad faith". Wright is not saying that all moral statements are bad faith. What he is saying is that if Mackie is correct, and somebody believes that Mackie is correct, then that person will be guilty of bad faith whenever he makes a moral statement. ==In law==