Falsehood

Falsehood is deliberate deception directed from one person toward another: the liar possesses the truth, hides it in speech, and relies on the other person taking the falsehood as true. Its decisive contrast is bad faith, which has the appearance of lying but cannot preserve the separation between deceiver and deceived, since both belong to one consciousness.

The Structure of a Lie

A lie is not simply an error or a mistaken belief. The liar knows the truth being concealed; someone who is ignorant, deceived by an error of their own, or merely mistaken does not lie in the strict sense. In the ideal case, the liar affirms the truth inwardly while denying it in words, and also denies that this denial is occurring. The deception is therefore intentional rather than accidental, even when the liar performs sincerity for the person being addressed.

The liar’s concealed intention remains available to the liar as a guide to conduct. A declaration of honesty may be staged as a character presented to the questioner, while the liar understands that this displayed character is not the truth of the intention. The lie does not require a special structure within present consciousness: its negations concern objects beyond consciousness, including the fact being falsified and the truth on which the denial rests. Its inner disposition can itself be described affirmatively as an intention to deceive.

A Relation Between People

Lying belongs to the ordinary conditions of being with others. It presupposes the liar, the other person, the liar’s existence for that person, and the other person’s existence for the liar. The liar need not be unclear about the truth or about the project of deception; what matters is that the other person does not see the intention and can accept the lie as truth.

In this exchange, concealment takes advantage of the difference between the person as consciousness and the person as seen by someone else. The liar presents an account that can be believed while maintaining an intention hidden from the listener. The lie thus depends on an outward relation: its falsehood is aimed at another, and its success depends on what that other can know or accept.

Falsehood and Bad Faith

The resemblance between lying and bad faith is real but limited. Both can involve hiding an unwelcome truth or advancing a pleasing untruth. But in a lie, the deceiver and the deceived remain distinct: one person conceals something from another. In bad faith, the person conceals the truth from themself, so that the duality needed for an ordinary lie is absent.

That difference changes the problem rather than merely relocating the audience. A liar may know exactly what is hidden while ensuring that the other person does not know it. Bad faith, by contrast, must account for how a single consciousness can comprehend the truth it is hiding from itself. The text identifies the lie as a behavior of transcendence, while treating bad faith as a project through which consciousness affects itself; ordinary lying therefore serves as a point of contrast, not as an explanation of self-deception.