The reason why bad faith is a problem is that it allows us to escape responsibility for our moral choices by treating humanity as the passive object of larger, organized forces — human nature, the Will of God, emotional passions, social pressures, etc. Sartre argued that we all act to shape our own destiny and as such, we need to accept and deal with the awesome responsibility this imposes upon us.
Sartre’s conception of bad faith is closely related to Heidegger’s idea of “fallenness.” According to Heidegger, we all have a tendency to allow ourselves to become lost in present concerns, a consequence of which is that we become alienated from ourselves and our actions. We come to see ourselves as if from the outside and it seems as though we don’t really make choices in our lives but instead are simply swept along by the circumstances of the moment.
Critical to Heidegger’s conception of fallenness are gossip, curiosity, and ambiguity — words which are related to their traditional meanings but he nevertheless used in specialized ways. The term gossip is used to denote all those shallow conversations in which one simply repeats accepted “wisdom,” reiterates cliches, and otherwise fails to actually communicate anything of importance. Gossip, according to Heidegger, is a means of avoiding authentic conversation or learning by focusing on the present at the expense of possible futures. Curiosity is the insatiable drive to learn something about the present for no other reason than that it is “new.”
Curiosity drives us to seek out momentary pursuits that in no way help us in the project of becoming, but they do serve to distract us from the present and from having to deal substantively with our own lives and choices.
Ambiguity, finally, is the consequence of a person who has given up on trying to actualize their choices and make the most of any sort of commitment which might lead to a more authentic self. Where there is ambiguity in a person’s life, there is a lack of real comprehension and purpose — no direction that a person is trying to move in for the sake of an authentic life.
A fallen person for Heidegger is not someone who has fallen into sin in the traditional Christian sense, but rather but a person who has given up on creating themselves and creating an authentic existence out of the circumstances they find themselves. They allow themselves to be distracted by the moment, they only repeat what they are told, and they are alienated from the production of value and meaning. In short, they have so fallen into “bad faith” that they no longer recognize or acknowledge their own freedom.
