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What unity do we find in these vaious aspects of bad faith? It is a certain art of forming contradictory concepts which unite in themselves both an idea and the negation of that idea. The basic concept which is thus engendered, utilizes the double property of the human being, who is at once a facticity and a transcendence. These two aspects of human reality are and ought to be capable of a valid co-ordination. But bad faith does not wish either to co-ordinate them or to surmount them in a synthesis. Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at the instant a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other

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Take the example of a young woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it will be necessary sooner or later for her to make a decision. But she does not want to feel the urgency; she concerns herself only with what is respectful and discreet in the attitude of her companion. She does not apprehend this conduct as an attempt to make what we call "the first advances"; that is, she does not want to see possibilities of temporal development which his conduct presents. She restricts this behavior to what is in the present; she does not wish to read in the phrases which he addresses to her anything other than their explicit meaning. If he says to her, "I find you so attractive!" she disarms this phrase of its sexual implications; she attaches to the conversation and to the behavior of the speaker the immediate meanings which she imagines as objective qualities. The man who is speaking to her appears to her sincere and respectful as the table is round or square, as the wall coloring is blue or gray.

The qualities thus attached to the person she is listening to are in this way congealed in a permanence like that of things, which is no other than the projection of the strict present of the qualities into the temporal flux. This is because she does not quite know what she wants. She is profoundly aware of the desire which she inspires, but the desire cruel and naked would humiliate and horrify her. Yet she would find no charm in a respect which would be only respect. In order to satisfy her, there must be a feeling which is addressed wholly to her personality- i.e., to her full freedom-and which would be a recognition of her freedom. But at the same time this feeling must be wholly desire; that is, it must address itself to her body as object. This time, then, she refuses to apprehend the desire for what it is; she does not give it a name, she recognizes it only to the extent that it transcends itself toward admiration, esteem, respect an that it is wholly absorbed in the more refined forms which it produces, to the extent of no longer retaining any prominence except as a sort of warmth and destiny.

But then suppose he takes her hand. This act of her companion risks changing the situation by calling for an immediate decision. To leave the hand there is to consent in herself to flirt, to involve herself. To withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony which gives the hour its charm. Her aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment wholly spiritual. She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of life, her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect - a personality a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion - neither consenting nor resisting - a thing. We shall say that this woman is in bad faith.

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