Existentialism Is a Humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, novelist, playwright, and critic. He was a leading intellectual of the 20th century and the leading proponent of existentialism. This short book is a transcript of a speech Sartre gave in 1945 to address many of the critics of existentialism. It’s a *remarkably* lucid, concise exposition on the primary tenets of existentialism—even more remarkable given the fact that Sartre gave this lecture without notes. Big Ideas we explore: Anguish + its antidote, passion vs. choice, quietism vs. commitment, the stern optimism of existentialism and moral choices as a work of art.
Big Ideas
- Existential Anguish (+ Its Antidote)+ Its antidote.
- Existentialism on: Passion + ChoiceAlways your call.
- Existentialism 101: Quietism vs. CommitmentDo what you’re here to do.
- The Sternness of Existential OptimismOf a ethical militant.
- Moral Choices + Works of ArtAs a work of art.
“What do we mean here by ‘existence precedes essence’? We mean that man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it. Man is not that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism.”
~ Jean-Paul Sartre from Existentialism Is a Humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, novelist, playwright, and critic. He was a leading intellectual of the 20th century and the leading proponent of existentialism.
While reading Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, I saw that James Stockdale included this book in his course syllabus on moral philosophy. So, of course, I immediately picked it up along with a bunch of the other titles. (We’ll be systematically working through that syllabus.)
Interestingly, both Stockdale and Sartre were prisoners of war. Sartre spent a year in a Nazi prison camp while Stockdale spent eight years in a North Vietnamese prison. In addition to sharing that experience, the two also share a FIERCE commitment to personal responsibility—which is, at the core, what both Stoicism and existentialism are all about.
(On that note, Viktor Frankl comes to mind—another man who suffered the indignities of war and wrote about the last freedom we each have: the freedom to choose our response to any given situation he describes in Man’s Search for Meaning.)
This short book is a transcript of a speech Sartre gave in 1945 to address many of the critics of existentialism. It’s a *remarkably* lucid, concise exposition on the primary tenets of existentialism—even more remarkable given the fact that Sartre gave this lecture without notes. (Get a copy here.)
As you can imagine, the book is not a leisurely read. I’m going to do my best to pull out some of my favorite Big Ideas we can apply to our lives today, so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFThus, the first effect of existentialism is to make every man conscious of what he is, and to make him solely responsible for his own existence. And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.
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Listen to the PodcastExistential Anguish (+ Its Antidote)
“This allows us to understand the meaning behind some rather lofty-sounding words such as ‘anguish,’ ‘abandonment,’ and ‘despair.’ As you are about to see, it is all quite simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? Existentialists like to say that man is in anguish. This is what they mean: a man who commits himself, and who realizes that he is not only the individual that he chooses to be, but also a legislator choosing at the same time what humanity as a whole should be, cannot help but be aware of his own full and profound responsibility. True, many people do not appear especially anguished, but we maintain that they are merely hiding their anguish or trying not to face it. Certainly, many believe their actions involve no one but themselves, and were we to ask them, ‘But what if everyone acted that way?’ they would shrug their shoulders and reply, ‘But everyone does notact that way.’ In truth, however, one should always ask oneself, ‘What would happen if everyone did what I am doing?’ The only way to evade that disturbing thought is through some kind of bad faith. Someone who lies to himself and excuses himself by saying, ‘Everyone does not act that way’ is struggling with a bad conscience, for the act of lying implies attributing a universal value to lies.”
Commitment. Responsibility. Action.
These are the words we see again and again.
When Sartre and existentialists talk about responsibility they aren’t just saying that we are responsible for our own choices.
Of course, we are personally responsible, but we also have the responsibility to choose actions that are noble enough to serve as a model for all of humanity—asking ourselves, “What would the world be like if EVERYONE did what I’m about to do?”
If you take that responsibility seriously (even a tiny bit seriously), you feel the intense (!!!) demands of its challenge.
Guess what?
That creates anguish.
Sartre tells us that anyone who doesn’t take that responsibility still has the anguish, they just mask it. Then they go numb themselves with excuses about how they’re not *actually* responsible—blaming their genes or upbringing or some other external force.
But, alas, as Campbell says in The Power of Myth: “Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself.”
Although we haven’t used the precise word “anguish” before, we’ve talked about this basic idea every time we’ve discussed living with areté/striving to express the highest version of ourselves moment to moment.
In any given moment, we are capable of expressing a certain potentiality. If we choose (it’s always a choice!!) to express *less than* the best within us, we create a gap between our potential self and our actual self. In this gap (and only in this gap) is where regret, anxiety, disillusionment and depression exist.
In a word: Anguish.
By accepting full responsibility and choosing to act as the best version of ourselves, we live with areté or virtue or excellence. The Greeks tell us THIS is the path to true happiness—a sense of eudaemonia or flourishing that one only feels when living with this deep sense of embodied integrity. (Chasing shiny things might momentarily distract you, but the anguish is not abated.)
So, in sum. Areté is the antidote to anguish.
In addition to asking, “What would the highest version of myself do in this moment?” we can also ask the even more rigorous existential question: “What would happen if everyone did what I am doing?”
Well, what would happen? :)
Let’s take full responsibility, embrace our anguish and live with areté.
P.S. Here’s how Viktor Frankl frames responsibility: “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Plus: “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
P.P.S. Eric Maisel wrote a book on an existential approach to dealing with depression called Rethinking Depression. It’s fantastic. In it, he offers another great way to make meaning in our lives: “How can I make myself proud?” <— I love that. Consider that with your next action…
Everything happens to every man as if the entire human race were staring at him and measuring itself by what he does. So every man ought to be asking himself, ‘Am I really a man who is entitled to act in such a way that the human race should be measuring itself by my actions?’ And if he does not ask himself that, he masks his anguish.
Existentialism on: Passion + Choice
“This is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. Existentialists do not believe in the power of passion. They will never regard a great passion as a devastating torrent that inevitably compels man to commit certain acts and which, therefore, is an excuse. They think that man is responsible for his own passion. Neither do existentialists believe that man can find refuge in some given sign that will guide him on earth; they think that man interprets the sign as he pleases and that man is therefore without any support or help, condemned at all times to invent man.”
Responsibility again.
Yep. For the existentialist, it’s A.L.W.A.Y.S. about responsibility.
The Stoics echo this wisdom regarding passion—although they refer to “passion” as “impressions.”
Here’s how Epictetus put it nearly 2,000 years before Sartre: “With these thoughts to defend you, you should triumph over any impression and not be dragged away. Don’t let the force of the impression when first it hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, ‘Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.’ Next, don’t let it pull you in by picturing to yourself the pleasures that await you. Otherwise, it will lead you by the nose wherever it wants. Oppose it with some good and honorable thought, and put the dirty one to rout. Practice this regularly, and you’ll see what shoulders, what muscles, what stamina you acquire. Today people care only for academic discussion, nothing beyond that. But I’m presenting to you the real athlete, namely the one training to face off against the most formidable of impressions.”
Choice.
Stepping in between the stimulus and, rather than blindly following our first impression (or passion), CHOOSING our optimal response.
Epictetus encourages us to practice on the small stuff to strengthen our responsibility muscles like an athlete conditions himself for competition.
Let’s do that.
No more excuses. It’s all a choice.
Therefore, in seeking me out, he knew what my answer would be, and there was only one answer I could give him: ‘You are free, so choose; in other words, invent. No general code of ethics can tell you what you ought to do; there are no signs in this world.
Existentialism 101: Quietism vs. Commitment
“Quietism is the attitude of people who say: ‘Others can do what I cannot do.’ The doctrine that I am presenting to you is precisely the opposite of quietism, since it declares that reality exists only in action. It ventures even further than that, since it adds: ‘Man is nothing other than his own project. He exists only to the extent that he realizes himself, therefore he is nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing more than his life.’ In view of this, we can clearly understand why our doctrine horrifies many people. For they often have no other way of putting up with their misery then to think: ‘Circumstances have been against me, I deserve a much better life than the one I have. Admittedly, I have never experienced a great love or extraordinary friendship, but that is because I never met a man or woman worthy of it; if I have written no great books, it is because I never had the leisure to do so; if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself, it is because I did not find a man with whom I could share my life. So I have within me a host of untried but perfectly viable abilities, inclinations, and possibilities that endow me with the worthiness not evident from any examination of my past actions.’ In reality, however, for existentialists there is no love other than the deeds of love; no potential for love other than that which is manifested in loving. There is no genius other than that which is expressed in the works of art; the genius of Proust resides in the totality of his works; the genius of Racine is found in the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the ability to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not do? In life, a man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who is not made a success of his life but on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations, and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes and futile expectations; in other words, they define him negatively, not positively. Nonetheless, saying ‘You are nothing but your life’ does not imply that the artist will be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things also help to define him. What we mean to say is that a man is nothing but a series of enterprises, and that he is the sum, organization, and aggregate of the relations that constitute such enterprises.”
Well, that’s intense, eh? :)
First, it’s time to drop “quietism”—the idea that we’re powerless to take action and that “others can do what I cannot do.”
The opposite of quietism? Commitment. We decide what needs to get done and do it.
Hopes? Dreams? Expectations?
They mean NOTHING.
For the existentialist, reality alone counts.
You say that you are loving? Don’t tell us about it, SHOW IT in your acts of love.
—> “For existentialists there is no love other than the deeds of love; no potential for love other than that which is manifested in loving.”
Have a big vision of how you’d like to serve? OK. Now, GO DO IT.
—> “In life, a man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who is not made a success of his life but on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts.”
We have the opportunity and the responsibility to draw our own portrait.
Let’s make it a masterpiece.
The only way I can measure the strength of this affection is precisely by performing an action that confirms and defines it.
The Sternness of Existential Optimism
“In light of all this, what people reproach us for is not essentially our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If people criticize our works of fiction, in which we describe characters who are spineless, weak, cowardly, and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not just because these characters are spineless, weak, cowardly, or evil. For if, like Zola, we were to blame their behavior on their heredity, or environmental influences, their society, or factors of an organic or psychological nature, people would be reassured and would say, ‘That is the way we are. No one can do anything about it.’ But when an existentialist describes a coward, he says that the coward is responsible for his own cowardice. He is not the way he is because he has a cowardly heart, lung, or brain. He is not like that as the result of his physiological makeup; he is like that because he has made himself a coward through his actions. …
What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly and the hero makes himself heroic; there is always the possibility that one day the coward may no longer be cowardly and the hero may cease to be a hero. What matters is the total commitment, but there is no one particular situation or action that fully commits you one way or the other.”
Existentialism talks a lot about the anguish and despair of the human condition—leading some critics to say that it is an inherently pessimistic philosophy.
In his talk, Sartre was explicitly addressing these critics and those criticisms.
His point in the passage above?
He was basically telling them: “Look, you don’t actually have a problem with existentialism’s *pessimism* per se, it’s our STERN OPTIMISM that freaks you out.
Fact is, we need to take full responsibility for our lives. This is very, very challenging; hence, we experience anguish and despair at times.
AND…
Life demands (!) that we rise to the challenge.
You would prefer I tell you that we can blame our heritage or government or whatever circumstance outside our control for our problems. Unfortunately, we CAN’T do that and live with integrity.
Sorry to break the news to you but we must assume total responsibility for who we are and who we are becoming.”
As I read that passage, I was struck by the parallels between Sartre’s “stern optimism” and the fixed mindset vs. growth mindset wisdom we talk about all the time.
Our culture is pretty much all about the fixed mindset—that things *outside* our control have determined who we are. We either have “it” (in whatever context “it” is relevant) or we don’t. That’s the fixed mindset.
The growth mindset tells us that, as per Anders Ericsson, we all have “the gift”—the gift of ADAPTABILITY. Our brains and bodies are astonishingly malleable. The greatest among us have simply made a total, long-term, gritty commitment to tapp into this gift but we ALL HAVE IT!
How are you orienting to the world?
In what contexts do you have a fixed mindset—thinking you can’t really change?
In what contexts do you have a growth mindset—knowing (!) you can adapt, grow, learn, optimize and actualize?
How can you +1%?
P.S. In the introduction to the book, Sartre was described as an “ethical militant.” An ethical militant…
Socrates (another ethical militant/stern optimist?) comes to mind: “I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can… And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same… I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.”
Indeed, in my opinion, anguish is the total absence of justification accompanied, at the same time, by responsibility toward all.
Moral Choices + Works of Art
“Our view … is that man finds himself in a complex social situation in which he himself is committed, and by his choices commits all mankind, and he cannot avoid choosing. … Whatever he does, he cannot avoid bearing full responsibility for his situation. He must choose without reference to any preestablished values, but it would be unfair to tax him with capriciousness. Rather, let us say that moral choice is like constructing a work of art.”
Sartre tells us that moral choice is like constructing a work of art.
In this context, he is making the philosophical point that our moral choices are like creating art, not aesthetically per se, but in the sense that there is no one telling the artist “this is what you should paint!” Rather, the artist is dynamically discovering and creating (on her own) as she brings the work of art to life.
So it is with each of us. We can use wisdom from sources outside ourselves, but, ultimately, we must decide how we should live. And, much more importantly, we must take action in integrity with those decisions.
And, in the process, we make our moral choices and our lives a beautiful masterpiece.
In truth, however, one should always ask oneself, ‘What would happen if everyone did what I am doing?’
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