Sartre: Existence precedes Essence Jean Paul Sartre was one of the leaders of the French post war left wing intellectual movement, co-founding with Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61) the journal Les Temps Modernes. His experiences as a resistance fighter shaped his philosophy that was influenced by the ideas of Husserl and Heidegger. Politically Sartre claimed he was a Marxist and thought that freedom had both political and individual dimensions. Unlike Kierkegaard, Sartre was an atheist. As God does not exist, there are no essences. By essence, Sartre is talking about a pre-defined human nature. What Sartre meant by the phrase existence precedes essence is this: If there is no cosmic designer, then there is no design or essence of human nature. Human existence or being differs from the being of objects in that human being is self-conscious. This self-consciousness also gives the human subject the opportunity to define itself. The individual creates his/her self by making self-directed choices. As human existence is self-conscious without being pre-defined, we, as autonomous beings are condemned to be free: compelled to make future directed choices. These choices induce anxiety and uncertainty in to our psyches. If we, as individuals, simply follow custom or social expectations in order to escape this angst, we have escaped the responsibility of making our own choices, of creating our own essence. We have acted in bad faith. To act authentically we must take responsibility for our future. We cannot choose what gender, class, or country we were born into, but we can choose what we make of them. We are free to create our own interpretation of ourselves in relation to the world, to create a project of possibilities, of authentic actions as the expression of freedom.
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 04:29:20 +0000
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