Sartre's existentialism

This lesson from a TEACHER we offer you a summary of Sartre's existentialism, a philosopher whose philosophical work can be divided into three distinct stages. A first phenomenological period influenced by Husserl, a second existentialist period, inspired by Heidegger and a third Marxist. The prolific thinker, left a great literary and journalistic legacy and was, in addition, an intellectual committed to the society of his time, as well as the fight to end injustices and social differences. If you want to know more about Sartre's existentialism, continue reading this article. We started!

The existentialist thinking It starts from the basis that all existence is meaningless and life is an absurdity, a useless passionin Sartre's words, denying any purpose, any direction and any essence thereof. The fact that there is no essence is demonstrated precisely by the recognition of this existence and of the freedom in which the existence of the human being develops, continually condemned to choose. The human being is born from this freedom and this is the only foundation of existence.

Jean Paul Sartre is the existentialist philosopher par excellence and among his extensive philosophical and literary production, works such as "The wall", "The nausea", "The dirty hands", "The respectful whore", etc. The notion of his existence is synthesized in the following sentence, paradigm of existentialist philosophy, "existence precedes essence".

Is distinction between existence and essence It would have already been made by Saint Thomas, who collects it from Avicenna and serves to separate contingent beings from necessary beings, God being the only necessary being and in the only being whose essence and existence is one and the same thing. The essence of God, therefore, is the existence of him. On the other hand, there are contingent beings, but in them existence is not essential, since they could both exist and not exist. Philosophers, like Kant, reject this distinction as totally unnecessary. The fact of existing does not offer a guarantee of possessing an essence.

Sartre he is a radical atheist and thus he denies the existence of God, and has a very different concept of existence. Without God, an eternal being, the idea of ​​an eternal essence to which a divinity has given existence also disappears. The human being has not been created by God nor does it constitute the actualization of an essence thought by him. Just, “is there” as realities without predetermined essence, and only on that depends human existence. Existing does not come after the essence, but quite the opposite. It is existence that precedes essence, it is prior. Because the essence, the "being" is the product of human existence, of his will. What the human being is is being built as he exists.

Freedom, is key in Sartrean thought, understood as the foundation of life and human essence, which is realized as the human being becomes. This freedom is at the same time his greatest misfortune, since he cannot stop being free, he is condemned to be free. Human beings are free but their existence is contingent,"lor essential is contingency".

"I mean, by definition, existence is not necessity. To exist is simply to be there; existing ones appear, they can be found, but they can never be deduced. There are those who, I believe, have understood this. Although they have tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary being and cause of itself. Now, no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not a mask, an appearance that can be dispelled; it is the absolute and, consequently, the perfect gratuitousness. Everything is free, this garden, this city and myself".

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The existentialist philosopher duplicates entities and thus speaks of a to be "per se", and a to be "for-yes". The human being is a being for himself, insofar as he becomes aware of his own existence, of his own being, insofar as they exist as beings that "are there", realizing themselves in his existence.

The human being identifies himself for Sartre with the nothing. The human being is nothingness, because he is a being for himself and not a being in himself. The latter is pure positivity, therefore, denial can only come from being for itself. Being itself will be the one that denies nothingness. A part of the human being, if it is a being in itself, that is, his "I", his body, his culture... But essentially, it is freedom, an undirected and indeterminate freedom, that is, nothing.

ANDl human, what is a being for-yes, tends to nothing to the extent that he is aware of his existence and his freedom, and here lies his own essence. The human being is that, his freedom. One and the other are identified, they are one and the same thing. This means that the human being does not have a predetermined nature with which he identifies. Existence is prior to essence, because the human being is his existence, a being for himself.

This freedom is discovered to the human being in The anguish, a feeling typical of one who becomes aware of his indeterminacy, of his freedom, of his "to be done", of one who knows himself as nothing, who understands himself as nothing. To get rid of this anguish, the human being tries to stop being free, but he does not succeed, he is doomed.