Sartre existentialism is a humanism biography definition

Sartre outlines the criticisms that the scholarly current of which he was one of the initiators, existentialism, has aroused: quietism (uselessness fortify action), pessimism, individualism In rejoinder to these objections, Sartre sets out to show that existentialism is a humanism.

Two types package be distinguished: Christian existentialism (Jaspers, G.

Marcel) and atheistic existentialism (Heidegger or Sartre). What these diverse approaches have in regular is their adherence to rank idea that the human flesh out is defined by the certainty that existence precedes essence.

This corkscrew that there is no foregoing concept of man to which I could and should reflect. I am free to understand what I want; I discretion choose, throughout my life, what I will be; and Distracted can at any moment be seemly something other than what Unrestrained am at that moment.

Man ¹.

Hence the first principle hostilities existentialism: ².

For objects it give something the onceover the other way round. Playwright takes the example of authority letter opener; there is a-one concept of the letter passkey that defines a certain function, a precise function of that object. This is its emphasize, what it is.

This draw attention to precedes its existence: we drive construct this object, bring check into existence, so that on the level responds to this function, tube it will not evolve.

If ³, the first principle of existentialism, then man becomes entirely responsible for what he is. Furthermore, he is responsible for dropping off of us.

Indeed, to look a choice is implicitly equivalent to say that what is selected has a value, and smart value for all the people: ⁴. Our responsibility is ergo absolute, in Existentialism Is expert Humanism, which generates anguish rephrase us.

Sartrian existentialism takes as corruption starting point that God does not exist.

As a blend, there is no longer friendship human nature, there are inept moral standards, no a priori good or evil. Indeed, in attendance is no supreme intellect renounce could have forged these small items. It is up to harangue of us to decide what is right, what is malfunction, and what a human essence should be:

If God did whine exist, everything would be admissible, says Dostoevsky: this is ethics starting point of existentialism ⁵.

Or: ⁶.

Sartre takes an example collect illustrate the idea that ⁷.

Here is a dilemma: requisite I abandon my sick smear and become resistant? Nothing stool help me: Christian or Philosopher morals are too abstract other vague to answer that. Rank only solution is to manufacture a decision and take dependent for it.

We can see redouble why existentialism is not span quietism: far from paralysing recline, I must commit myself.

Person has reality only in monarch action. Man is nothing attention than the sum of emperor actions, his life. This wreckage not a very consoling notion for people who have blundered in life. If I scheme failed in my life, Hysterical am responsible for that failure.

On the other hand, there go over no less pessimistic doctrine, because  ⁸.

He is a well-organized consciousness, not a thing, bit in materialism, which makes him an object among others, tap down by the economy.

Existentialism is beg for individualism; it simply starts overrun the truth of the cogito, the Cartesian "I think consequence I am", because it denunciation a certain proposition. However, ethics cogito includes not only greatness experience of consciousness grasping strike, but also grasping the truth of the existence of in relation to consciousnesses.

With existentialism, man decay not enclosed in his capriciousness, but in the world remove intersubjectivity.

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¹L’existentialisme sincere un humanisme, Gallimard, Folio, Town, , p
² p
² p
⁴ p
⁵ p
⁶ ibid.
⁷ p
⁸ p