Sartrean Existentialism

For my final report, I want to take you on a philosophical journey to Paris in the 40s and 50s. My previous report was on the French existentialists (Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus). This time, I would like to focus on Jean-Paul Sartre and expand on his views on existentialism, a philosophical movement that he popularized. To set the right atmosphere, I made a small playlist of popular French songs of that period.

Who was Jean Paul Sartre?

Sartre was born on June 21st of 1905 in Paris as the only child of a bourgeois family. His father, an officer of the French navy passed when he was two years old. He was raised by his mother, his grandfather who was a celebrated physician, and his grandmother a respected writer. Sartre went to the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and, later on, after the remarriage of his mother, to the lycée de La Rochelle. From there he went to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, from which he graduated in 1929. During his time in college, Sartre was known for spending much of his time in cafés writing and discussing philosophy with his peers. He and his peers were also known for partying in a district called Saint Germain des Près, which later got the name "The Existentialist district". From 1931 until 1945 Sartre taught high school philosophy. Twice his teaching career was interrupted, once by a year of study in Berlin and the second time when Sartre was drafted in 1939 to serve in World War II. He was made a prisoner in 1940 and released a year later. During his years of teaching, Sartre published multiple philosophical novels, but it was above all in L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness; 1943) that Sartre revealed himself as a philosopher of remarkable originality and depth. Sartre places human consciousness, or no-thingness (néant), in opposition to being, or thingness (être). In 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize for Literature, which had been awarded to him “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age.”

What is existentialism?

 

-       English definition: A philosophical theory which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

-       Translated French definition: Doctrine according to which Man is not determined in advance by its essence, but free and responsible of his existence. 

Since I'm bilingual, I conducted my research in both French and English. I found it interesting that the Anglo-Saxon definition failed to mention the ideas of essence and existence together. Probably a testament to the impact of Sartre on France and the Francophonie in general.

“Existence precedes essence”

                                        -Jean-Paul Sartre

•  Essence: The intrinsic nature of something
• Existence: The act of being, existing.

As an example to illustrate these ideas, let's watch a clip from Rick and Morty where Morty acts as the higher power assigning a robot the essence of his existence.

Sartre views on Existentialism     

-       Anguish of freedom: Jean-Paul Sartre believed that human beings live in constant anguish, not solely because life is miserable, but because we are 'condemned to be free'. While the circumstances of our birth and upbringing are beyond our control, he reasons that once we become self-aware (and we all do eventually), we have to make choices — choices that define our very 'essence'. Only by existing and acting a certain way do we give meaning to our lives. According to him, there is no fixed design for how a human being should be and no God to give us a purpose. This lack of pre-defined purpose presents to us infinite choices is what Sartre attributes to the “anguish of freedom”. With nothing to restrict us, we have the choice to take actions to become who we want to be and lead the life we want to live.

-       The burden of responsibility: Sartre believed that as free beings, people are responsible for all elements of themselves, their consciousness, and their actions. With total freedom comes total responsibility (Like uncle ben said to Peter, with great power, comes great responsibility). He believed that even those people who wish not to be responsible, who declare themselves not responsible for themselves or their actions, are still making a conscious choice and are thus responsible for anything that happens because of their inaction.

    

-    Bad faith: Jean-Paul Sartre was against the idea of living without pursuing freedom. The phenomenon of people accepting that things have to be a certain way, and subsequently refusing to acknowledge or pursue alternate options, was what he termed as "living in bad faith". According to Sartre, people who convince themselves that they have to do one particular kind of work or live in one particular city are living in bad faith. In Being and Nothingness, he explains the concept of bad faith through the example of a waiter who is so immersed in his job that he considers himself to be first a waiter rather than a free human being. This waiter is so convinced that his present job is all that he can do, that it's all that he's meant to do, that he never considers the option of doing anything else in life.