Sartre advocated that we recognise the values upheld in our society as ‘so many guard rails against anguish’, urging us to choose our own, but at least he had a pet vice – ‘bad faith’: similar, perhaps to Heidegger’s ‘inauthenticity’. Yet, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre declares that, ultimately, ‘the goal of sincerity and the goal of bad faith are not so different’.
I’ll discuss what he might mean by this, and his attitude to sincerity and authenticity in general.