In Being and Nothingness , French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre referred to our natural capacity to deceive ourselves as ‘bad faith’. Bad faith exists in our tendency to believe we are not who we really are; that we have no options and therefore act in an inauthentic manner. Sartre regarded bad faith as a denial of freedom which we all have.
He gives an example of a waiter, who tells himself that to wait on tables is his destiny. The takeaway here is that to blame social pressures or others for what we are or what we do may be comforting, but it is a denial of the freedom we have.
