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Self-deception
For Sartre, self-deception was a necessary component of bad faith. Milgram’s findings
strongly support this aspect of Sartre’s thesis. But logically, there is an irreconcilable
difficulty between self-deception and bad faith. We employ methods of objectification
to deceive ourselves about the reality of our freedom and choice. However, that self-
deception can never be total. To be in bad faith there must be intention. For there to be
intention, there cannot be total self-deception. Milgram’s experiments suggest a
possible solution to this logical impasse and builds on Warnock’s interpretation that
while self-deception is a necessary component of bad faith there may be different levels
of deception and bad faith.
Consider again the response of the different responses of Milgram’s subjects. The man
positioned at the far end of the bad faith spectrum used the defence that he was only
following the researcher’s orders. During the experiment, the man totally adopted the
agentic state. In the follow-up interview, he is “enmeshed in the formulation, [that he
was following the orders of the researchers] which he repeats several times” (p. 67).
The man continues to employ mechanisms to reinforce his denial of his part in the
experiments and thus maintains his self-deception long after the real formulation for the
experiment was revealed to him. In contrast, another subject obeyed the researcher and
continued to deliver shocks up to 255 volts. His level of self-deception was effective up
to the point in the experiment when he could no longer ignore the cries of agony from
the learner – actor. When asked who was accountable for shocking the learner against
his will, he said “I would put it on myself entirely” (p. 68). For this man, the agentic
state was only partial, existing only within the context of the experiment up to a certain
point and completely dissipating on later reflection. A few did not adopt the agentic
state at all. Instead, in good faith they declined to take any further part in the
experiment when they realised that they were being asked to harm someone simply
because they were failing to answer some questions correctly.
These different responses demonstrate how there are different levels of bad faith
depending on the level of self-deception achieved. Like the thin social veneer of laws,
rules and conventions which when removed led to the state of nature on Golding’s
desert island, individually we employ methods of objectification which create a veneer,
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