Jean-Paul Sartre · Philosophy
If we have no fixed essence, then we are radically free - and Sartre means this almost without limit. The deepest threat to such freedom is not the tyrant but ourselves: <em>bad faith</em> (mauvaise foi), the self-deception by which we flee our freedom and pretend to be fixed things, playing roles and hiding behind ‘I had no choice.’
You learned that for Sartre we are radically free, and that bad faith is the self-deception by which we deny that freedom - treating ourselves as fixed things or playing a role to avoid the anguish of choice. Explain the café waiter and the woman on the date, and what makes their attitude bad faith.
Leads to Epictetus.
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