The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was instrumental in defining the intellectual movement of existentialism in the mid-20th century. More than any other thinker, Sartre crystallized the key ideas of existentialist philosophy. Together with Simone de Beauvoir, his lifelong companion, he named existentialism and popularized it. Sartre's philosophy can best be summarized in the phrase "no excuses!" He despised the fact that people disclaimed responsibility for their cowardly and hypocritical roles during World War II. Sartre argues that we are "absolutely free." Whatever the situation, Sartre argues, we have choices. We are all responsible for what we do, what we are, and the way the world is.
At the core of Sartre’s existentialism was the concept of radical freedom and responsibility. For Sartre, humans are “condemned to be free” - we are free to make choices that define who we are, and we bear full responsibility for those choices rather than blaming outside forces. This makes life both anxiety-provoking and deeply meaningful.
Related to this was his assertion that “existence precedes essence.” Rather than having a predetermined essence, Sartre said humans create their essence through their actions and choices. Our existence as conscious beings comes first, and we construct our own nature constantly. He also described some of the practical realities of radical freedom, including anguish, abandonment, and despair. With no predetermined values to guide us, we suffer anguish in making choices. We also face abandonment since we cannot rely on others to determine our choices.
Sartre also applied existentialist ideas to politics. He advocated freedom as the ultimate political value and criticized both capitalism and communism as denying human freedom. Sartre's existentialism was thus explicitly political and socially engaged.
Through literary works like Nausea and No Exit, Sartre creatively expressed major existentialist themes of alienation, authenticity, and freedom. As a novelist, playwright, and philosopher, Sartre brought existentialism to a wide audience and crystallized its meaning.
In the years following WWII, Sartre’s version of existentialism achieved tremendous popularity and influence. Through both creative works and treatises like Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre most clearly articulated the existentialist perspective and became its popular face. More than any other thinker, Sartre defined existentialism for the 20th century.
Excuses for failing to engage::
"What can I do about it?"- an appeal to individual impotence.
"I didn't start the war, did l?"- an appeal to personal innocence.
"Everyone else is doing it"- an appeal to the "herd,"
“I'm just looking out for myself (the same way everyone else is)" an appeal to human nature. the instinct for self-preservation.
"I couldn't help it; I had no choice" - the appeal to helplessness.
"I couldn't help it; I was afraid'" - the appeal to emotions.
Against all such excuses. Sartre wants to argue that we are "absolutely free.” We are responsible for what we do, what we are. and the way our world is. This does not mean (what is absurd) that everyone can do (succeed in) anything they choose. It does mean that there are no ultimate constraints on consciousness.
Sartre's harsh view is that everyone is responsible for his or her situation.
Sartre's early essay on emotions calls them “magical transformations of the world,"
Emotions are choices, strategies for coping with a difficult world. Emotions are not mere sensations or "feelings. They have "intentionality. They also have "finality" or purpose.
Sartre begins his lifelong attack on Freud. He rejects Freud's ''unconscious'' and “psychic determinism." Sartre rejects "the unconscious."
Sartre also rejects the very idea of "psychic determinism," the notion that human emotions, thoughts, and decisions are caused by antecedent conditions and external events. They are not to be construed as forces 'within us.' the Freudian 11id," acting upon us against our will (and apart from our knowledge).
Emotions, then, are always about something. An emotion is a strategy for dealing with the world.
Sartre develops his own brand of psychoanalysis, "existential" psychoanalysis.
Sartre borrows heavily from Husserl.
He tells us that consciousness is freedom. Consciousness is also “nothingness.”
Because consciousness is intentional, it is always about something other than itself and outside the nexus of causal relations.
Consciousness has the power of negation, and we are always able to distance ourselves from objects of consciousness, including our own mental states.
In separating consciousness and the world, Sartre is a Cartesian. Freedom and responsibility have their source in consciousness.
Sartre adopts a “two standpoints." view, much like his illustrious predecessor Kant. From the first-person phenomenological perspective, we cannot see ourselves as anything other than free. But from a naturalistic (scientific) standpoint, we can view ourselves as creatures that can be explained by biology and the other natural sciences.
Existential Phenomenology:
Sartre uses the word “spontaneity" to carve out a middle range between deliberate agency and mindless habit.
anguish is an experience of our own freedom.
shame is an experience of the existence of other people.
nausea is an experience of the pervasiveness of Being.
Sartre, following Heidegger. claims to have an ontology, a theory about the basic makeup of the world. It contains three elements: 1) being-for itself, 2) the being of consciousness; 3) being-in·itself, the existence of things; and 4) being-for-others, one's essential relationships with other people. What he ultimately seeks is a theory of the self. He thus distinguishes between "facticity'' (facts true of us) and '"transcendence" (our need to make choices and interpret the world). Sartre tells us that the desire to be both in-itself and for-itself is the desire to be God and that confusing facticity and transcendence is "bad faith."
Sartre distinguishes between consciousness and the self. In an early essay, "The Transcendence of the Ego,'' Sartre argued that consciousness is not the self. The self is "out there in the world, like the consciousness of another." The self, he goes on to argue, is a product, an accumulation of actions, habits, achievements, and failures. Sometimes other people know us better than we do. Consciousness doesn't contain the "I," the self.
Human existence is both being-in-itself and being-for-itself. As embodied in a particular place at a particular time in particular circumstances, we have what Sartre (following Heidegger) calls "facticity” or facts that are true about us. As consciousness, we have what Sartre calls "transcendence.” (Heidegger's ''existence"). The term "transcendence" means "outside of' but serves several very different uses for Sartre.
It refers. first of all, to our transcendence of the "facts." Desires or plans reach beyond facts.
It also refers to our transcendence of the present into the future.
We are to be described by our personalities and our plans "I am what I am not." (dialectics.)
Facticity and transcendence limit each other
We falsify ourselves by subscribing exclusively to facticity or transcendence. Either alone leads to bad faith, but bad faith is inescapable.
Sartre raises serious questions about what should count as an "ethics." Sartre does not in fact reject morality. He establishes an ethics of what is more commonly called "integrity”
Being-for-others is presented in contrast to traditional skeptical problems concerning our knowledge of the existence of other people. Many philosophers have argued that we know of the existence of other people through an obvious kind of inference. Sartre insists that our knowledge of other people comes first of all from being looked at by them, for example, when we are embarrassed or ashamed. Accordingly, our relations with others are essentially confrontations and conflict. In No Exit, one of his characters notes, "Hell is other people."
Our primary knowledge of other people comes not from observing them but rather from being looked at by them. Thus, shame is our conduit into the interpersonal world.
We are all, in essence, always on trial.
Being-for-others is being objectified according to their judgments. Bad faith is seeing ourselves only as others do - or only as we do.
Sartre, like Camus, seriously considers the prevalence of guilt as a necessary outcome of human awareness and being for others.
For Sartre, however, the notion of responsibility takes priority over the more pathological notion of guilt, a secular notion of original sin.