What is 'bad faith', and why did Sartre say a café waiter was lying to himself?
Sartre's waiter is too perfect at being a waiter, and that, Sartre argued, is exactly the trouble.
▶ Start the story, in Sartre's sense, is lying to yourself about your own freedom: acting as if circumstances or a role force you to do what you in fact choose to do. In existentialism, it means acting by yielding to society's pressures, adopting false values and disowning your freedom. And Sartre's most famous example is a café waiter who is a little too good at being a waiter.
Sartre describes a waiter whose movements and conversation are a little too 'waiter-esque'. His voice is eager to please, he carries food rigidly and ostentatiously, and his movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. According to the account, his exaggerated behaviour shows that he is play-acting as a waiter, as an whose essence is to be a waiter. Since he is obviously acting, he is aware that he is not merely a waiter, and so he is consciously deceiving himself.
Sartre's second example is a young woman on a first date. When her date takes her hand, she lets it rest 'neither consenting nor resisting', and so she delays the moment when she must choose whether to accept or reject his advances.
The café waiter
- Movements a little too precise and rapid
- Play-acts as an whose essence is to be a waiter
The woman on a date
- Lets her hand rest 'neither consenting nor resisting'
- Delays the moment when she must choose
What makes strange is that it is . A person in bad faith denies their own freedom, but relies on that same freedom to perform the denial. Sartre said people are 'condemned to be free', and external circumstances, called , may limit them but cannot force them to follow one remaining course over another.
Not every scholar reads the waiter the same way: Leslie Stevenson believes that calling the waiter an example of misrepresents Sartre's intentions.
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Recap
For Sartre, circumstances can limit you but cannot choose for you, so even fleeing responsibility is your own choice.
💡 A trick to remember it · The waiter plays the waiter so well that the actor disappears behind the costume.
Surprising fact · Bad faith is paradoxical: you rely on your freedom to deny it.
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Sources (4)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (16 claims) cites at least one of these.