Existentialism and Human Emotions
by Jean Paul Sartre
I SHOULD LIKE on this occasion to defend existentialism against some
charges which have been brought against it.
First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of
desperate quietism because, since no solutions are possible, we should have
to consider action in this world as quite impossible. We should then end up
in a philosophy of contemplation; and since contemplation is a luxury, we
come in the end to a bourgeois philosophy. The communists in particular have
made these charges.
On the other hand, we have been charged with dwelling on human degradation,
with pointing up everywhere the sordid, shady, and slimy, and neglecting the
gracious and beautiful, the bright side of human nature; for example,
according to Mlle. Mercier, a Catholic critic, with forgetting the smile of
the child. Both sides charge us with having ignored human solidarity, with
considering man as an isolated being. The communists say that the main
reason for this is that we take pure subjectivity, the Cartesian I think, as
our starting point; in other words, the moment in which man becomes fully
aware of what it means to him to be an isolated being; as a result, we are
unable to return to a state of solidarity with the men who are not
ourselves, a state which we can never reach in the cogito.
From the Christian standpoint, we are charged with denying the reality and
seriousness of human undertakings, since, if we reject God's commandments
and the eternal verities, there no longer remains anything but pure caprice,
with everyone permitted to do as he pleases and incapable, from his own
point of view, of condemning the points of view and acts of others.
I shall today try to answer these different charges. Many people are going
to be surprised at what is said here about humanism. We shall try to see in
what sense it is to be understood. In any case, what can be said from the
very beginning is that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes
human life possible and, in addition, declares that every truth and every
action implies a human setting and a human subjectivity.
As is generally known, the basic charge against us is that we put the
emphasis on the dark side of human life. Someone recently told me of a lady
who, when she let slip a vulgar word in a moment of irritation, excused
herself by saying, "I guess I'm becoming an existentialist." Consequently,
existentialism is regarded as something ugly; that is why we are said to be
naturalists; and if we are, it is rather surprising that in this day and age
we cause so much more alarm and scandal than does naturalism, properly so
called. The kind of person who can take in his stride such a novel as Zola's
The Earth is disgusted as soon as he starts reading an existentialist novel;
the kind of person who is resigned to the wisdom of the ages-which is pretty
sad-finds us even sadder. Yet, what can be more disillusioning than saying
"true charity begins at home" or "a scoundrel will always return evil for
good"?
We know the commonplace remarks made when this subject comes up, remarks
which always add up to the same thing: we shouldn't struggle against the
powers that-be; we shouldn't resist authority; we shouldn't try to rise
above our station; any action which doesn't conform to authority is
romantic; any effort not based on past experience is doomed to failure;
experience shows that man's bent is always toward trouble, that there must
be a strong hand to hold him in check, if not, there will be anarchy. There
are still people who go on mumbling these melancholy old saws, the people
who say, "It's only human!" whenever a more or less repugnant act is pointed
out to them, the people who glut themselves on chansons realistes; these are
the people who accuse existentialism of being too gloomy, and to such an
extent that I wonder whether they are complaining about it, not for its
pessimism, but much rather its optimism. Can it be that what really scares
them in the doctrine I shall try to present here is that it leaves to man a
possibility of choice? To answer this question, we must re-examine it on a
strictly philosophical plane. What is meant by the term existentialism?
Most people who use the word would be rather embarrassed if they had to
explain it, since, now that the word is all the rage, even the work of a
musician or painter is being called existentialist. A gossip columnist in
Clartes signs himself The Existentialist, so that by this time the word has
been so stretched and has taken on so broad a meaning, that it no longer
means anything at all. It seems that for want of an advanced-guard doctrine, analogous to surrealism, the kind of people who are eager for scandal and
flurry turn to this philosophy which in other respects does not at all serve
their purposes in this sphere.
Actually, it is the least scandalous, the most austere of doctrines. It is
intended strictly for specialists and philosophers. Yet it can be defined
easily. What complicates matters is that there are two kinds of
existentialists; first, those who are Christian. among whom I would include
Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both Catholic; and on the other hand the
atheistic existentialists among whom I class Heidegger, and then the French
existentialists and myself. What they have in common is that they think that
existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the
starting point.
Just what does that mean? Let us consider some object that is manufactured,
for example, a book or a papercutter: here is an object which has been made
by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept. He referred to the
concept of what a paper-cutter is and likewise to a known method of
production, which is part of the concept, something which is, by and large,
a routine. Thus, the paper-cutter is at once an object produced in a certain
way and, on the other hand, one leaving a specific use; and one can not
postulate a man who produces a paper-cutter but does not know what it is
used for. Therefore, let us say that, for the paper-cutter, essence-that is,
the ensemble of both the production routines and the properties which enable
it to be both produced and defined-precedes existence. Thus, the presence of
the paper-cutter or book in front of me is determined. Therefore, we have
here a technical view of the world whereby it can be said that production
precedes existence.
When we conceive God as the Creator, He is generally thought of as a
superior sort of artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether
one like that of Descartes or that of Leibniz, we always grant that will
more or less follows understanding or, at the very least, accompanies it,
and that when God creates He knows exactly what he is creating. Thus, the
concept of man in the mind of God is comparable to the concept of a
paper-cutter in the mind of the manufacturer, and, following certain
techniques and a conception, God produces man, just as the artisan,
following a definition and a technique, makes a paper-cutter. Thus, the
individual man is the realization of a certain concept in the divine
intelligence.
In the eighteenth century, the atheism of the philosophers discarded the
idea of God, but not so much for the notion that essence precedes existence.
To a certain extent, this idea is found everywhere; we find it in Diderot,
in Voltaire, and even in Kant. Man has a human nature; this human nature,
which is the concept of the human, is found in all men, which means that
each man is a particular example of a universal concept, man. In Kant, the
result of this universality is that the wild-man, the natural man, as well
as the bourgeois, are circumscribed by the same definition and have the same
basic qualities. Thus, here too the essence of man precedes the historical
existence that we find in nature.
Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states
that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence
precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any
concept, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality.
What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that,
first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only
afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is
indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be
something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no
human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he
conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be
after this thrust toward existence.
Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first
principle of existentialism. It is also what is called subjectivity, the
name we are labeled with when charges are brought against us. But what do we
mean by this, if not that man has a greater dignity than a stone or table?
For we mean that man first exists, that is, that man first of all is the
being who hurls himself toward a future and who is conscious of imagining
himself as being in the future. Man is at the start a plan which is aware of
itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower
nothing exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be
what he will have planned to be. Not what he will want to be. Because by the
word "will" we generally mean a conscious decision, which is subsequent to
what we have already made of ourselves. I may want to belong to a political
party, write a book, get married; but all that is only a manifestation of an
earlier, more spontaneous choice that is called "will." But if existence
really does precede essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus,
existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to
make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. And when we say
that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is
responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all
men.
The word subjectivism has two meanings, and our opponents play on the two.
Subjectivism means, on the one hand, that an individual chooses and makes
himself; and, on the other, that it is impossible for man to transcend human
subjectivity. The second of these is the essential meaning of
existentialism. When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that
every one of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this
choice he also chooses all men. In fact, in creating the man that we want to
be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time
create an image of man as we think he ought to be. To choose to be this or
that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we
can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good
for us without being good for all.
If, on the other hand, existence precedes essence, and if we grant that we
exist and fashion our image at one and the same time, the image is valid for
everybody and for our whole age. Thus, our responsibility is much greater
than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind. If I am a
workingman and choose to join a Christian trade-union rather than be a
communist, and if by being a member I want to show that the best thing for
man is resignation, that the kingdom of man is not of this world, I am not
only involving my own case-I want to be resigned for everyone. As a result,
my action has involved all humanity. To take a more individual matter, if I
want to marry, to have children; even if this marriage depends solely on my
own circumstances or passion or wish, I am involving all humanity in
monogamy and not merely myself. Therefore, I am responsible for myself and
for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing.
In choosing myself, I choose man.
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