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Levels of bad faith
Conscious awareness
Good faith
The soldier appears to have adopted a low level form of the agentic state. He
partially attributed his actions to the military orders he was given and took
the remaining responsibility as his own.
This soldier’s description of events demonstrates that even though he had
been through a full military training programme aimed at maximising
obedience to authority, he retained conscious awareness.
Whilst the soldier partially attributed responsibility for his actions onto the
military order, he also had his own personal justifications. The soldier
admitted that he had his own justifications for thinking that killing the
Vietnamese people was the right thing to do at the time.
Instruments of bad faith
The agentic state.
Transience and context dependence
External influences
This case study demonstrates both the transient and context dependent
nature of bad faith. The soldier was partially in a state of bad faith at the
time of the incident and was able to reflect on that some time afterwards and
outside of the context of war.
The law – this soldier was not under the threat of legal action unlike
Lynndie England.
Military training – this soldier would also have undergone military training
designed to foster obedience to authority and follow without question the
orders of superiors.
This case is significant because it demonstrates the complex response of a person faced
with an alien and, to the majority of people who have never been exposed to anything
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