Summary: Existentialism Is a Humanism

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

Two types can be distinguished: Christian existentialism (Jaspers, G. Marcel) and atheistic existentialism (Heidegger or Sartre). What these diverse approaches have in common is their adherence to the idea that the human being is defined by the fact that existence precedes essence.

This means that there is no pre-established concept of man to which I could and should conform. I am free to become what I want; I will choose, throughout my life, what I will be; and I can at any moment become something other than what I am at that moment.

Man first is nothing. He will only be afterwards, and he will be as he has made himself ¹. Hence the first principle of existentialism: Man is nothing other than what he makes himself ².

For objects it is the other way round. Sartre takes the example of the letter opener; there is a concept of the letter opener that defines a certain utility, a precise function of this object. This is its essence, what it is. This essence precedes its existence: we will construct this object, bring it into existence, so that it responds to this function, and it will not evolve.

If man is nothing other than what he makes himself ³, the first principle of existentialism, then man becomes entirely responsible for what he is. Moreover, he is responsible for all of us. Indeed, to make a choice is implicitly to say that what is chosen has a value, and a value for all the people: In choosing myself, I choose everyone ⁴. Our responsibility is therefore absolute, in Existentialism Is a Humanism, which generates anguish in us.

Sartrian existentialism takes as its starting point that God does not exist. As a result, there is no longer any human nature, there are no moral standards, no a priori good or evil. Indeed, there is no supreme intellect that could have forged these notions. It is up to each of us to decide what is right, what is wrong, and what a human being should be:

If God did not exist, everything would be permissible, says Dostoevsky: this is the starting point of existentialism ⁵.

Or: We are alone, without excuses. This is what I will express by saying that man is condemned to be free ⁶.

Sartre takes an example to illustrate the idea that man is condemned at every moment to invent man ⁷. Here is a dilemma: should I abandon my sick mother and become resistant? Nothing can help me: Christian or Kantian morals are too abstract and vague to answer that. The only solution is to make a decision and take responsibility for it.

We can see then why existentialism is not a quietism: far from paralysing action, I must commit myself. Man has reality only in his action. Man is nothing other than the sum of his actions, his life. This is not a very consoling doctrine for people who have failed in life. If I have failed in my life, I am responsible for that failure.

On the other hand, there is no less pessimistic doctrine, since man's destiny is in himself ⁸. He is a free consciousness, not a thing, as in materialism, which makes him an object among others, determined by the economy.

Existentialism is not individualism; it simply starts from the truth of the cogito, the Cartesian "I think therefore I am", because it is a certain proposition. However, the cogito includes not only the experience of consciousness grasping itself, but also grasping the certainty of the existence of other consciousnesses. With existentialism, man is not enclosed in his subjectivity, but in the world of intersubjectivity.

¹ L’existentialisme est un humanisme, Gallimard, Folio, Paris, 2010, p.29
² p.30
² p.31
⁴ p.33
⁵ p.39
⁶ ibid.
⁷ p.40
⁸ p.56