Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist, and the central figure of 20th-century existentialism. His philosophy emphasizes radical freedom, individual responsibility, and the absence of any predetermined human nature or cosmic purpose.
Core Concepts
Existence Precedes Essence
Sartre's foundational claim: unlike objects (e.g., a paper-knife, which is designed with a purpose before it is made), humans exist first and define themselves through their choices. There is no human nature, no predetermined essence — we are what we choose to become.
Radical Freedom and Responsibility
Because there is no God, no cosmic plan, and no human nature, humans are "condemned to be free." This freedom is absolute and inescapable — even choosing not to choose is a choice. With this freedom comes total responsibility: we are responsible not only for ourselves but, in choosing, for all of humanity.
Bad Faith (Mauvaise Foi)
Bad faith is the self-deception of denying our freedom by pretending we are determined by external forces — our social role, our past, our biology. The waiter who is "too much" a waiter, the woman who pretends not to notice her hand is being held — both are in bad faith, denying their freedom to choose.
The Look (Le Regard)
The experience of being seen by another person objectifies us, reducing our subjective freedom to an object in their world. This conflict between subjects — each trying to assert their freedom over the other — is the foundation of Sartre's claim that "hell is other people."
Backlinks
- Carl Gustav Jung — Sartre's concept of bad faith and Jung's concept of the persona both describe the psychological mechanisms by which individuals adopt false selves to avoid confronting their authentic existence.
- Continental Philosophy — Sartre is the central figure of French existentialism within the Continental tradition, developing the implications of Heidegger's phenomenology for human freedom and responsibility.
- George Orwell (1903-1950) — Both Sartre and Orwell were politically engaged intellectuals who grappled with the tension between individual freedom and collective political action, though Sartre moved toward Marxism while Orwell remained a democratic socialist.
- Henry James — James's psychological realism — the meticulous rendering of consciousness and choice — provides the literary counterpart to Sartre's philosophical account of radical freedom and responsibility.
- Jacques Lacan — Lacan's account of the subject as constituted by the Symbolic Order challenges Sartre's existentialist emphasis on radical, autonomous choice.
- Norman Mailer — Mailer's "American Existentialism" is a direct adaptation of Sartre's philosophy to the post-WWII American context.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson — Emerson's emphasis on self-reliance and nonconformity anticipates Sartre's existentialist insistence on authentic individual choice against social conformity.
- Søren Kierkegaard — Kierkegaard is the 19th-century precursor to Sartre's existentialism, though Kierkegaard's leap of faith is precisely what Sartre's atheist existentialism rejects.
- Travis Bickle — Travis Bickle is a Sartrean figure: radically free, defining himself through violent action, refusing the bad faith of social conformity.
- Viktor Frankl — Frankl's logotherapy — the will to meaning — offers a direct counterpoint to Sartre's existentialism: where Sartre sees a universe without meaning that we must create ex nihilo, Frankl insists that meaning is discovered, not invented.