Jean-Paul Sartre

No, we are not. Although there is no natural or God-given human essence that we must fulfill, there are nevertheless limits in every human life - this factor Sartre calls the "universal human condition." These are the givens of each person's life and that each person must accept and struggle with: that I was born at a certain historical moment rather than another; that I was born into one class rather than another; that I am a man rather than a woman; that I must work, that I must interact with other persons; and that I will die.

Are we totally free, according to Sartre?

Anguish: to choose not only for oneself but for all persons is to feel massively responsible, and that makes you sweat a little

Choosing one's life, and in doing so affirming for all men the sort of life that is good, provokes in us what response, according to Sartre?

No; we are perpetually under way. We always have a new project drawing us away from what we are toward some new state.

Is a man's or a woman's life ever complete, according to Sartre?

Yes - because for Sartre, in choosing and creating a life for myself I am at the same time affirming, in acting as I do, what it is good for any person to do and to become.

Is there any social dimension to Sartre's version of existentialism?

we are what we make of ourselves

The Main Idea:

Freedom, individual responsibility, and our capacity for - and the fact of - our self-creation. Existentialism is focused on the free decisions that individuals make against the background of life's conditions - particularly the negative ones mentioned earlier - and each person's individual responsibility for those decisions and their consequences in terms of who we are and who we become.

What aspects of human life does existentialism stress?

That there is no given pattern or design to life imposed on us by God - who, in any case, doesn't exist - or somehow built into us by nature (think of Aristotle's view that our telos is happiness). We have no inherent purpose to fulfill, no given excellence to realize. Before we make something of ourselves, we are nothing.

What does Sartre mean by "existence precedes essence"?

Self-creation and facing up to, without excuses, what we have made of ourselves. It is about extending our awareness of, and acceptance of responsibility for what our lives, in fact, amount to. It is also about becoming sensitive to the many ways that we deceive ourselves by hiding from our freedom and responsibility, pretending that because of factors beyond our control we "had to" do this or that or to become this or that.

What is Sartre's thought predominantly about?

One of loneliness and alienation from traditional truths and ways of life, of each person thrown back onto his or her own resources in the task of discovering his life's purpose, meaning, and direction

What is existentialism's dominant mood?

A fundamental concern for the human individual - as contrasted with a concern for ideas - and that individual's place in the world, especially those aspects of human life that limit or inhibit it: suffering, death, failure, dread, and in Sartre's case, self-deception.

What is the common core or starting place of existentialist thought?

Self-deception

What is the great "sin," in Sartre's view ?

A life of activity. This is because it is only through activity that we exist at all.

What sort of life does man's indeterminacy call him to, according to Sartre?