Bad faith
Etymology
An English rendering of the French "mauvaise foi," central to Jean-Paul Sartre’s "Being and Nothingness" (1943). Distinct from the legal sense of dishonest dealing, Sartre’s bad faith is a flight from one’s own radical freedom by treating oneself as a fixed thing.
noun phrase · /BAD FAYTH/
Self-deception in which you deny your own freedom, pretending you had no choice in order to escape responsibility.
What it names
A handle for a subtle way people lie to themselves — reach for it to name hiding behind a role or “I had no option” to avoid owning a decision.
Example
“I’m just doing my job” was bad faith — he was choosing to comply and pretending the choice wasn’t his.
Related idea
The opposite of existential authenticity; where authenticity owns one’s freedom and choices, bad faith disowns them by posing as a mere object of circumstance.