Jean-Paul Sartre

My true self is my freedom to define myself

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was an important French existentialist philosopher, political activist, novelist and playwright. In his student years, while studying philosophy and other fields at École Normale Supérieure, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who became his life-long companion and lover. The two maintained an ongoing open relationship, and developed philosophies that were close in spirit. In World War II Sartre was drafted by the French army, and was take a prison by German forces. On his return to Paris, he participated with other intellectuals in underground activities, and also published his main philosophical book Being and Nothingness (1943). At different times in his life he was actively involved in various social causes such as communism, anti-colonialism, and human rights. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, but declined it. He died in 1980 from a lung condition.

A fundamental idea in Sartre's philosophy is that human consciousness is radically free – there is no fixed human nature that determines how we behave. Our decisions are not determined by emotions, personality, or any other force. One may say that there is no "true self" within us. To be authentic can only mean being faithful to our freedom to determine what we do and who we are. The following quotations are adapted from a short but influential book, published in 1946. In this essay, Sartre explains the basic principles of his existentialist theory, and defends it against criticisms.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares that if God does not exist, then there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, in other words, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is the human being.

What do we mean by saying that EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE? We mean that the human being first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. The human being, as seen by the existentialist, cannot be defined because at first he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.

Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God who can have a conception of it. A human being simply is. The point is not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but that he is what he wills to be after his leap towards existence. A human being is nothing else but what he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

[…] What we mean to say is that the human being has a greater dignity than a stone or a table. Because he first of all exists – he is something which pushes itself towards a future, and he is aware that this is what he is doing. A human being is, indeed, a project which has a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before he project himself, nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: A human being will only attain existence when he is what he decides to be.

[…] If it is true that existence is before essence, then a human being is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first result of existentialism is that it puts every human being in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence directly upon his own shoulders.

If indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one's action as a result of a given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man IS freedom. That is what I mean when I say that the human being is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, and yet he is at liberty. So from the moment that he is thrown into this world, he is responsible for everything he does.

The existentialist does not believe in the power of emotion. He will never regard a grand emotion as a destructive flow which forces the person to do certain actions, as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for doing those actions. He thinks that the human being is responsible for his emotion.

Neither will an existentialist think that a person can find help through some sign that will be given to him upon earth to show him the right way – because the person himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every person, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every moment to invent man.