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| The Lovers (1928), Rene Magritte |
Sartre, talking about his writing style, once said: “Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.”
Sartre’s writing, just like what he said about his style, offers readers an arduous, philosophical obstacle course. Just when you think you’ve understood a concept, he flips the script and leaves you staring at the page. In the process, he gently chokes you emotionally. His sentences, like the thought processes of his characters, twist and turn like a Parisian alley at night: dark, eerie, confusing and smelling like Gauloises.
***
Nausea, my most favorite work of Sartre, plunges readers into Antoine Roquentin’s stifling realization that existence does not have intrinsic meaning. Sartre’s striking prose captures the misery and liberation of this revelation as Roquentin confronts with the emptiness of people, objects, and his own life. “Everything is gratuitous, this park, this city, and myself. When you realize this, your heart turns over and everything begins to float….” Roquentin’s growing disgust, or nausea, stems from this realization that existence precedes essence, and that there is nothing that justifies the world’s presence. The novel provides readers with an experience of existential dread, leaving them unsettled yet moved by its unsparing honesty.
Another favorite of mine, The Wall, set during the Spanish Civil War, is a psychological exploration of existentialism. It follows Pablo Ibbieta, a revolutionary captured during the war and sentenced to death. Spending his last night in a prison cell before the impending execution and going through an introspective struggle, Pablo’s first-person narrative allows Sartre to reveal the two main themes of the story: the indifference of the universe and the meaninglessness of existence.
Before moving on to the main theme of this post, I’ll quickly sum up my third favorite, No Exit, which is notably set in hell, in a locked and windowless room with three people in it. The three characters - a journalist executed for treason, a wealthy woman who killed her illegitimate child, and a postal clerk who forced her lover to commit suicide - are condemned to torment each other forever. The play’s most famous line, "Hell is other people," highlights that the suffering of the three characters comes not from physical torture, but from the unavoidable gaze and judgment of each another.
***
Intensive and exhausting - and infuriating at times, reading Sartre’s magnum opus Being and Nothingness (1943), a 700-page essay on phenomenological ontology, is less about understanding and more about surviving. You’ll flip to a random page and read sentences such as, “Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being, and for which there is no being except through the consciousness of being” and “Nothingness is not the mere absence of being; it is the negation of being, and as such, it is supported by being and can only be conceived in relation to being.” These sentences force the readers to stretch their brain in ways it’s not used to.
Why he writes like this is because it’s his rhetorical and philosophical strategy. Existentialism is messy, and the phenomenological precision he intends to achieve cannot be done in simpler words. Existentialism is more about the search rather than finding answers. Also, he doesn't do hand-holding, assuming his readers are willing to go the extra mile to do the work and accept that the complexity and confusions surrounding his sentences are an absolute necessity.
***
"Bad Faith" (Mauvaise Foi) is one of Sartre’s most famous ideas from Being and Nothingness. Bad faith is a type of self-deception where people avoid the pain of freedom and responsibility. To elaborate it, Sartre breaks existence into two parts: Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself. The first is the mode of lifeless and motionless objects without consciousness. A furniture or statue simply is what it is and has no potential to be otherwise. Meanwhile, Being-for-itself symbolises human consciousness, defined by freedom and nothingness. A person exists as possibilities and choices. He is radically free but condemned to this freedom.
According to Sartre, human reality is a constant battle between the situation we have been given, such as body, social roles, past, circumstances, and our ability to surpass that situation by making choices. Bad faith primarily occurs in two ways. First, we act like a fixed object, treating ourselves as if we are our assigned role. Second, we ignore our reality to avoid responsibilities.
Sartre provides three examples of bad faith, in which characters refuse their freedom by either holding onto fixed roles or avoiding responsibility: the café waiter over-identifying with his role and reducing himself to a fixed object; the young woman on a date who oscillates between seeing herself as a free person and seeing herself as an object of desire; and the homosexual who acknowledges same-sex desires but avoids the uneasiness of defining himself.
***
To further explain and simplify Sartre’s bad faith in modern cultural contexts, I also offer five examples of bad faith, all from contemporary television.
There is a certain bad faith on display in the Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul TV series, embodied by Walter White, Mike Ehrmantraut and Jimmy McGill in their refusal to be answerable for their actions. Jimmy uses his “Saul Goodman” persona and points the finger at others for his lies and manipulations rather than admit he has made a choice to be morally compromised. Mike holds fast to an image of himself as a disciplined and moral man, but he will not concede that he is accountable, preferring to see the violence and criminality as simply part of the job. And Walter is always at pains to make it clear to everyone, including himself, that this life of crime is for his family’s sake, a convenient way to sidestep the fact that he chooses power, pride, and ambition.
In Babylon Berlin, Gereon Rath is shown as a passive victim of the corrupt system around him. He uses alcohol to numb his sense of involvement and pretends helplessness to avoid confronting his role, effectively denying his own agency.
In Kleo, Kleo Strauss, the female protagonist of another German TV show, attaches herself to the identity of a victim of the Stasi. She resorts to her trauma as an excuse for her vengeful actions and rejecting her freedom to respond differently.
***
With institutions and individuals alike abdicating their freedom and responsibility by regarding their roles or identities as some kind of fixed essence, modern society is rife with collective bad faith. A blazing example is social media. These performative spaces are an obvious source of bad faith, offering the temptation to become a brand, an aesthetic, or a curated identity that often diverges from reality.
Sartre contended that there is no lasting remedy for bad faith because it is ingrained in human consciousness. Yet he proposed that authenticity can serve as a cure. To be authentic is to engage in a measure of self-consciousness and analysis to identify and put up resistance to bad faith. It is not without its cost, however: one must be willing to accept the anguish that comes with radical freedom.
This means accepting the idea that one is "condemned to be free" and taking full responsibility for one’s choices. This responsibility also includes the choice to avoid responsibility and at least recognizing that "I am in bad faith right now," which demands clarity and courage.
***
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| Insomnia (2026), Jing Zhiyong |
Nausea, my most favorite work of Sartre, plunges readers into Antoine Roquentin’s stifling realization that existence does not have intrinsic meaning. Sartre’s striking prose captures the misery and liberation of this revelation as Roquentin confronts with the emptiness of people, objects, and his own life. “Everything is gratuitous, this park, this city, and myself. When you realize this, your heart turns over and everything begins to float….” Roquentin’s growing disgust, or nausea, stems from this realization that existence precedes essence, and that there is nothing that justifies the world’s presence. The novel provides readers with an experience of existential dread, leaving them unsettled yet moved by its unsparing honesty.
Another favorite of mine, The Wall, set during the Spanish Civil War, is a psychological exploration of existentialism. It follows Pablo Ibbieta, a revolutionary captured during the war and sentenced to death. Spending his last night in a prison cell before the impending execution and going through an introspective struggle, Pablo’s first-person narrative allows Sartre to reveal the two main themes of the story: the indifference of the universe and the meaninglessness of existence.
Before moving on to the main theme of this post, I’ll quickly sum up my third favorite, No Exit, which is notably set in hell, in a locked and windowless room with three people in it. The three characters - a journalist executed for treason, a wealthy woman who killed her illegitimate child, and a postal clerk who forced her lover to commit suicide - are condemned to torment each other forever. The play’s most famous line, "Hell is other people," highlights that the suffering of the three characters comes not from physical torture, but from the unavoidable gaze and judgment of each another.
***
 |
| The Scream (1893), Edvard Munch |
Intensive and exhausting - and infuriating at times, reading Sartre’s magnum opus Being and Nothingness (1943), a 700-page essay on phenomenological ontology, is less about understanding and more about surviving. You’ll flip to a random page and read sentences such as, “Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being, and for which there is no being except through the consciousness of being” and “Nothingness is not the mere absence of being; it is the negation of being, and as such, it is supported by being and can only be conceived in relation to being.” These sentences force the readers to stretch their brain in ways it’s not used to.
Why he writes like this is because it’s his rhetorical and philosophical strategy. Existentialism is messy, and the phenomenological precision he intends to achieve cannot be done in simpler words. Existentialism is more about the search rather than finding answers. Also, he doesn't do hand-holding, assuming his readers are willing to go the extra mile to do the work and accept that the complexity and confusions surrounding his sentences are an absolute necessity.
***
 |
| Some Day My Prince Will Come (1996), Andrew Valko |
"Bad Faith" (Mauvaise Foi) is one of Sartre’s most famous ideas from Being and Nothingness. Bad faith is a type of self-deception where people avoid the pain of freedom and responsibility. To elaborate it, Sartre breaks existence into two parts: Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself. The first is the mode of lifeless and motionless objects without consciousness. A furniture or statue simply is what it is and has no potential to be otherwise. Meanwhile, Being-for-itself symbolises human consciousness, defined by freedom and nothingness. A person exists as possibilities and choices. He is radically free but condemned to this freedom.
According to Sartre, human reality is a constant battle between the situation we have been given, such as body, social roles, past, circumstances, and our ability to surpass that situation by making choices. Bad faith primarily occurs in two ways. First, we act like a fixed object, treating ourselves as if we are our assigned role. Second, we ignore our reality to avoid responsibilities.
Sartre provides three examples of bad faith, in which characters refuse their freedom by either holding onto fixed roles or avoiding responsibility: the café waiter over-identifying with his role and reducing himself to a fixed object; the young woman on a date who oscillates between seeing herself as a free person and seeing herself as an object of desire; and the homosexual who acknowledges same-sex desires but avoids the uneasiness of defining himself.
***
 |
| Kleo |
To further explain and simplify Sartre’s bad faith in modern cultural contexts, I also offer five examples of bad faith, all from contemporary television.
There is a certain bad faith on display in the Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul TV series, embodied by Walter White, Mike Ehrmantraut and Jimmy McGill in their refusal to be answerable for their actions. Jimmy uses his “Saul Goodman” persona and points the finger at others for his lies and manipulations rather than admit he has made a choice to be morally compromised. Mike holds fast to an image of himself as a disciplined and moral man, but he will not concede that he is accountable, preferring to see the violence and criminality as simply part of the job. And Walter is always at pains to make it clear to everyone, including himself, that this life of crime is for his family’s sake, a convenient way to sidestep the fact that he chooses power, pride, and ambition.
In Babylon Berlin, Gereon Rath is shown as a passive victim of the corrupt system around him. He uses alcohol to numb his sense of involvement and pretends helplessness to avoid confronting his role, effectively denying his own agency.
In Kleo, Kleo Strauss, the female protagonist of another German TV show, attaches herself to the identity of a victim of the Stasi. She resorts to her trauma as an excuse for her vengeful actions and rejecting her freedom to respond differently.
***
With institutions and individuals alike abdicating their freedom and responsibility by regarding their roles or identities as some kind of fixed essence, modern society is rife with collective bad faith. A blazing example is social media. These performative spaces are an obvious source of bad faith, offering the temptation to become a brand, an aesthetic, or a curated identity that often diverges from reality.
Sartre contended that there is no lasting remedy for bad faith because it is ingrained in human consciousness. Yet he proposed that authenticity can serve as a cure. To be authentic is to engage in a measure of self-consciousness and analysis to identify and put up resistance to bad faith. It is not without its cost, however: one must be willing to accept the anguish that comes with radical freedom.
This means accepting the idea that one is "condemned to be free" and taking full responsibility for one’s choices. This responsibility also includes the choice to avoid responsibility and at least recognizing that "I am in bad faith right now," which demands clarity and courage.
Sartre’s concept of bad faith remains powerful because of its emphasis on radical responsibility. It challenges us to embrace our freedom instead of hiding behind fixed roles, identities, and excuses. In a world of fluid identities and pressures to conform to gender, religious, sexual, political, and social norms, the concept of bad faith is as relevant in 2026 as it was in 1943 - perhaps even more so.
