The Humanism of Existentialism

Philosophy 1

Spring, 2002

G. J. Mattey

Jean-Paul Sartre

• Born 1905• From France• Worked with the French

Resistance in World War II

• Wrote novels, short stories, and plays

• Became a Marxist• Turned down Nobel Prize

(1964)• Died 1980

Sartre’s Contributions

• Popularized existentialism• Reformulated Descartes’s dualism a contemporary

framework• Argued for absolute freedom and responsibility

for human beings• Author of many memorable quotations and

examples– “Man is a useless passion”– “Hell is other people”

Existentialism

• Existentialism is a philosophy of human existence

• The existence of a human being is prior to that human’s essence

• What I am now is a matter of the free choices I have made

• “Subjectivity must be the starting point”

Marxist Criticisms

• Marxists emphasized human solidarity and materialist determinism

• They accused existentialism of despairing of solutions to societal problems– This leads to contemplation, not action, so

existentialism is a bourgeois philosophy

• Since it begins with the subjectivity of the “I think,” they accuse it of precluding solidarity with other people

Christian Criticisms

• Existentialism neglects the gracious and beautiful in favor of the “sordid, shady, and slimy”

• By denying that there are divine commands, it makes all human action arbitrary

• It is impossible to criticize the actions of another, since it is due entirely to the other’s choice, which is not based on principle

Optimism and Pessimism

• Those who criticize existentialism for being too gloomy are themselves very pessimistic– Bad actions are considered “human nature”– They encourage us to submit to authority– They tell us that rebellion is romantic fantasy

• These people may be afraid of existentialism because of its optimism, since humans retain the possibility of choice

What Existentialism Is

• The label “existentialist” is attached to all kinds of things, “even the work of a musician or painter”

• But existentialism is a technical philosophical doctrine

• The existentialist camp is split– Christians (Jaspers, Marcel)– Atheists (Heidegger, French existentialists, Sartre)

• They agree on the doctrine that existence precedes essence

Essence As Preceding Existence

• In the case of an artifact (e.g., a paper-cutter), production of an existing thing follows a prior concept

• God’s creation of the world would work in the same way: human beings would be made in accord with a concept of them

• Enlightenment philosophers (e.g., Kant) made “human nature” the essence the precedes existence

Atheist Existentialism

• A more coherent account of human beings denies the existence of God

• If there is no God, there is at least one kind of creature, the human being, in whom existence precedes essence

• Man turns up on the scene and then defines himself as man

• So, he must have begun as nothing• There is no human nature, because there is no God to

conceive of it: man is only what he wills himself to be

Subjectivity

• The starting point for humans is subjective because humans make themselves what they are

• Subjectivity is a dignity, not a drawback– Only humans are possessed of subjectivity

• Making ourselves what we are leaves us responsible for our own actions

• Humans are responsible not only for themselves, but for all humanity, since we “create an image of man as we think he ought to be”

• We always choose the good, which is good for all

Anguish

• Existentialists say that the human being is anguish • Someone who chooses for himself and for all of

mankind realizes his deep responsibility• To deny this is an act of universal lying• Anguish is evident when we lack a proof that what

we have chosen to do is right (what Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham”)

• It is the basis for action, because it acknowledges various open possibilities

Forlornness

• Heidegger described humans as forlorn because we must face the consequences of the non-existence of God

• This is opposed to the view that nothing would change if God does not exist

• It is distressing because there is no ultimate source of values if God does not exist

• Dostoyevsky: If God does not exist, everything is permitted

Freedom

• The human being is freedom, with no justification or excuses

• We are condemned to be free insofar as we find ourselves thrown into the world as free beings

• We are even responsible for our own passions

The Choice

• A student has good reasons to remain with his mother or to leave her to try to fight the Nazis

• It is a certainty that staying will help her, and an ethics of sympathy dictates it

• It is not certain that he would help against the occupier, but a broader ethics dictate it

• There is no means, Christian or Kantian, to force a choice in either direction

• He remained with his mother, deciding in terms of feeling: the choice made the feeling right

Despair

• Despair means that we can only reckon from probabilities

• The possibilities from which probabilities are drawn cannot be adapted to the will

• We might count on people we know well, but this is just like counting on the trolley’s not jumping the tracks

• On the other hand, we can strive to make the future different from what it would be without our actions

Reality Alone Counts

• An person is of a certain kind (e.g., writer) only insofar as he engages in that activity

• What a person hopes or wishes to be does not matter; only the produced realities do

• In assessing a person, we must take all his activities into account

• For man is the sum of his undertakings

Optimistic Toughness

• Existentialist write of people with character flaws• They do not attribute these to circumstances or

heredity, but to free choices• There is no such thing, e.g., as a cowardly

constitution, as there is a nervous one• But people would like these traits to be

deterministic• The existentialist keeps open the possibility of

change in anyone in any circumstance

Subjectivity Again

• The human starting-point must be subjective• The only firm beginning is “I think; therefore, I

exist”• Everything else is mere probability• This prevents man from being reduced to an object• It also acknowledges that the other is

indispensable to my own existence (e.g., as witty)

Universality

• There is a universal human condition: mortal being in the world

• This is objective, and the situation of any human can be understood

• But it is subjective, as the human condition is always being built through individual human choices

The Consequences of Subjectivity

• The subjectivity of existentialism is said to have bad consequences– No one must act on principle, leading to anarchy

– No one may pass judgments on another

– Choice is arbitrary

• The first objection is not serious– One may not choose not to choose

– The choices are made in a way that involves all of mankind

Art and Ethics

• We do not criticize painters for not having a pre-conceived notion from which they work

• The values appear in the painting itself

• Ethical decisions are like artistic creations

• In choosing our ethics, we make ourselves

• “It is therefore absurd to charge us with arbitrariness of choice”

Relativity

• In a sense we cannot pass judgment on others• People are what their choices, made in a situation,

make them• There is no progress in the sense of betterment• One can still pass judgment, however

– We can condemn those who take refuge in the excuse that the passions dictated his actions

– Dishonesty is an error: choosing dishonesty is less coherent than choosing honesty

Moral Judgment

• Upon becoming forlorn, a person can only wish for freedom

• When we are engaged in activity, our freedom depends on the freedom of others– Cowards hide freedom from themselves with

deterministic excuses– Stinkers try to show that their existence is

necessary

Abstract Morality

• Kantian morality correctly recognizes the central role of freedom

• But it is too abstract to provide real moral guidance

• The concrete case of the student cannot be decided on Kantian grounds: there is always invention

Seriousness

• Inventing values is a serious business

• It would be nice if another being were a source of values, but there is none

• When we come into the world, we have to provide values for ourselves

• This provides the possibility for creating a human community

Humanism

• One meaning of “humanism” has been rejected in Sartre’s Nausea”– Taking individual credit as a human for the deeds of

others

• Another is implicit in existentialism– Man transcends his individuality

• The only universe is a human one, and the only lawmakers individual human beings

• It would not matter even if God did exist