Jean-Paul Sartre, (1905-1980) born in Paris in 1905, studied at the
École Normale Supérieure
from 1924 to 1929 and became Professor of Philosophy at Le Havre in 1931.
With the help of a stipend from the Institut Français
he studied in Berlin (1932) the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Martin
Heidegger.
After further teaching at Le Havre, and then in Laon, he taught at the Lycée
Pasteur in Paris from 1937 to 1939. Since the end of the Second World War,
Sartre has been living as an independent writer. Sartre is one of those writers for whom a determined philosophical position is the centre of their artistic being. Although drawn from many sources, for example, Husserl's idea of a free, fully intentional consciousness and Heidegger's existentialism, the existentialism Sartre formulated and popularized is profoundly original. Its popularity and that of its author reached a climax in the forties, and Sartre's theoretical writings as well as his novels and plays constitute one of the main inspirational sources of modern literature. In his philosophical view atheism is taken for granted; the "loss of God" is not mourned. Man is condemned to freedom, a freedom from all authority, which he may seek to evade, distort, and deny but which he will have to face if he is to become a moral being. The meaning of man's life is not established before his existence. Once the terrible freedom is acknowledged, man has to make this meaning himself, has to commit himself to a role in this world, has to commit his freedom. And this attempt to make oneself is futile without the "solidarity" of others.
The conclusions a writer must draw from this position were set forth in "Qu'est-ce que la littérature?" (What Is Literature?), 1948: literature is no longer an activity for itself, nor primarily descriptive of characters and situations, but is concerned with human freedom and its (and the author's) commitment. Literature is committed; artistic creation is a moral activity.
While the publication of his early, largely psychological studies, L'Imagination (1936), Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (Outline of a Theory of the Emotions), 1939, and L'Imaginaire: psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination (The Psychology of Imagination), 1940, remained relatively unnoticed, Sartre's first novel, La Nausée (Nausea), 1938, and the collection of stories Le Mur (Intimacy), 1938, brought him immediate recognition and success. They dramatically express Sartre's early existentialist themes of alienation and commitment, and of salvation through art.
His central philosophical work, L'Etre et le néant (Being and Nothingness), 1943, is a massive structuralization of his concept of being, from which much of modern existentialism derives. The existentialist humanism which Sartre propagates in his popular essay L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism), 1946, can be glimpsed in the series of novels, Les Chemins de la Liberté (The Roads to Freedom), 1945-49.
Sartre is perhaps best known as a playwright. In Les Mouches (The Flies), 1943, the young killer's committed freedom is pitted against the powerless Jupiter, while in Huis Clos (No Exit), 1947, hell emerges as the togetherness of people.
Sartre has engaged extensively in literary critisicm and has written studies on Baudelaire (1947) and Jean Genet (1952). A biography of his childhood, Les Mots (The Words), appeared in 1964.
From Nobel Lectures ,Literature 1901-1967.
Jean-Paul Sartre died in 1980.
SARTRE SUMMARY
1. EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE. "Freedom is existence, and in it existence precedes essence." This means that what we do, how we act in our life, determines our apparent "qualities." It is not that someone tells the truth because she is honest, but rather she defines herself as honest by telling the truth again and again.
I am a professor in a way different than the way I am six feet tall, or the way a table is a table. The table simply is; I exist by defining myself in the world at each moment.
2. SUBJECT RATHER THAN OBJECT. Humans are not objects to be used by God or a government or corporation or society. Nor we to be "adjusted" or molded into roles --to be only a waiter or a conductor or a mother or worker. We must look deeper than our roles and find ourselves.
3. FREEDOM is the central and unique potentiality which constitutes us as human. Sartre rejects determinism, saying that it is our choice how we respond to determining tendencies.
4. CHOICE. I am my choices. I cannot not choose. If I do not choose, that is still a choice. If faced with inevitable circumstances, we still choose how we are in those circumstances.
5. RESPONSIBILITY. Each of us is responsible for everything we do. If we seek advice from others, we choose our advisor and have some idea of the course he or she will recommend. "I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing responsibilities."
6. PAST DETERMINANTS SELDOM TELL US THE CRUCIAL INFORMATION. We transform past determining tendencies through our choices. Explanations in terms of family, socioeconomic status, etc., do not tell us why a person makes the crucial choices we are most interested in.
7. OUR ACTS DEFINE US. "In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait, and there is nothing but that portrait." Our illusions and imaginings about ourselves, about what we could have been, are nothing but self-deception.
8. WE CONTINUALLY MAKE OURSELVES AS WE ARE. A "brave" person is simply someone who usually acts bravely. Each act contributes to defining us as we are, and at any moment we can begin to act differently and draw a different portrate of ourselves. There is always a possibility to change, to start making a different kind of choice.
9. OUR POWER TO CREATE OURSELVES. We have the power of transforming ourself indefinitely.
10. OUR REALITY AND OUR ENDS. Human reality "identifies and defines itself by the ends which it pursues", rather than by alleged "causes" in the past.
11. SUBJECTIVISM means the freedom of the individual subject, and that we cannot pass beyond subjectivity.
12. THE HUMAN CONDTION. Despite different roles and historical situations, we all have to be in the world, to labor and die there. These circumstances "are everywhere recognisable; and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if we do not live them.
13. CONDEMNED TO BE FREE. We are condemned because we did not create ourselves. We must choose and act from within whatever situation we find ourselves.
14. ABANDONMENT. "I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help.
15. ANGUISH. "It is in anguish that we become conscious of our freedom. ...My being provokes anguish to the extent that I distrust myself and my own reactions in that situation."
1) We must make some choices knowing that the consequences will have profound effects on others (like a commander sending his troops into battle.)
2) In choosing for ourselves we choose for all humankind.
16. DESPAIR.
We limit ourselves to a reliance on that which is within our power, our capability to influence. There are other things very important to us over which we have no control.
17. BAD FAITH means to be guilty of regarding oneself not as a free person but as an object. In bad faith I am hiding the truth from myself. "I must know the truth very exactly in order to conceal it more carefully. (There seems to be some overlap in Sartre's conception of bad faith and his conception of self-deception.)
A person can live in bad faith which ...implies a constant and particular style of life.
18. "THE UNCONSCIOUS" IS NOT TRULY UNCONSCIOUS. At some level I am aware of, and I choose, what I will allow fully into my consciousness and what I will not. Thus I cannot use "the unconscious" as an excuse for my behavior. Even though I may not admit it to myself, I am aware and I am choosing.
Even in self-deception, I know I am the one deceiving myself, and Freud's so-called censor must be conscious to know what to repress.
Those who use "the unconscious" as exoneration of actions believe that our instincts, drives, and complexes make up a reality that simply is; that is neither true nor false in itself but simply real.
19. PASSION IS NO EXCUSE. "I was overwhelmed by strong feelings; I couldn't help myself" is a falsehood. Despite my feelings, I choose how to express them in action.
20. ONTOLOGY: The study of being, of what constitutes a person as a person, is the necessary basis for psychoanalysis.
