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experiments have demonstrated that whilst people do adopt mechanisms of
objectification to deny their subjective selves, there are external factors; societies,
socialisation processes, the situations which we are in, which appear to influence
whether and how we assert our values.
Perhaps the most obvious example of someone who has been objectified by an external
process is a soldier in the army. The military employ a host of devices to transfer the
individual to an agentic state as far as possible. These include taking an oath of
allegiance, systems of reward and punishment, defining actions in terms of larger
societal purpose rather than individual goals, dehumanising the enemy, maintenance of
discipline portrayed as important for own and others’ survival and the cause for killing
and war is represented as just (Milgram, 1974, p. 197-198). Each of these devices is
aimed at making the soldier the instrument of the command of the higher authority.
Self-deception and conscious intention
Sartre proposes that the use of bad faith is totally up to the individual. But it seems as
though there may be circumstances when do not always have complete freedom and
choice to make decisions which assert our conscience, our values. Can external
conditions ever fully subsume the conscious intention of an individual? Logic provides
us with two answers. Either yes, the agentic state can be total in which case bad faith
ceases to be bad faith because the subject no longer has conscious intention. Or no, the
agentic state can never be totally objectified and while the conscious intention remains,
a person retains a choice of whether to be in bad faith or good faith. However, once
again the limits of logic fail to capture the complexity of the individual human
condition. The extent to which we respond to external influences vary as much as our
unique experiences, socialisation processes, and personalities.
Milgram’s subjects have demonstrated how different people adopt different levels of
the agentic state. For some in the military the external objectification process will be
effective. Yet, for others, transformation to the agentic state is only partial, and human
values break through (Milgram, 1974, p. 199). This seeming ambiguity is reflected in
societies’ response to the classic defence of a soldier to war crimes; that they were only
obeying orders. On one hand, the military system employs methods to create an agentic
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