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1-Page Summary of Existentialism
Overall Summary
Sartre’s lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism seeks to accomplish two goals: first, it tries to offer an accessible introduction to his existentialist philosophy, and secondly, it tries to address the wide-ranging criticism he received from other philosophers.
Sartre opens this essay by mentioning some of the criticisms that existentialism has received. Some people think it’s too complicated, while others don’t take the time to understand it. Others say that existentialism is useless because it doesn’t tell you what to do or how to live your life. Sartre says his philosophy isn’t pessimistic and actually encourages action and thinking about other people.
Sartre then defines existentialism for his audience. He argues that people are free to define themselves and their own values. They don’t have a predetermined nature or purpose, so they can decide what they want to be and how they want to live their lives. People are the sum of their actions, but also imagine who they could become in the future because human life is a project (in the noun sense) and people project (in the verb sense) an image of themselves in order to define their essence. This universal condition contrasts with earlier views of essential human nature that were used by atheists as arguments against religion; therefore, individuals express a set of values about what’s “good” for humanity by acting on those values through action.
After finishing his core arguments, Sartre describes three key concepts in existentialism: anguish, abandonment and despair. The freedom to choose is also the burden of being responsible for your choices. Anguish is the realization that you have made a choice and are now responsible for it. This is different from Christians who feel angst because they believe they don’t make their own choices; instead, people usually avoid responsibility by blaming others or circumstances beyond their control. This avoidance of responsibility is called bad faith.
Abandonment is the idea that people are left to their own devices and have to decide who they want to be. It’s a concept that comes from Sartre, who says “people are condemned to be free.” His reasoning is that we don’t believe in God anymore, so there’s no predetermined moral compass for us. People then have no choice but to make decisions based on what they see as true and how it affects them personally. He uses examples of students and priests he met while imprisoned by Nazis during World War II (the student was studying philosophy) as evidence of this abandonment because even these people didn’t know why things were happening or if what they believed would come true. For Sartre, despair means being rational about the circumstances you’re in instead of believing something will happen just because you want it badly enough—or worse yet, relying on faith alone to get through life without having any real proof or knowledge behind your beliefs.
Sartre addresses the criticisms that have been made against existentialism. He argues that people who recognize their subjectivity are always already recognizing the existence of others with parallel subjectivities, and vice versa. Then he responds to the criticism that existentialism makes values meaningless by comparing life to a work of art: while there is no predetermined measure for a good or bad artwork (and if there were, artists wouldn’t be free), an artwork can still clearly express its own value structure and offer a distinct perspective on the world. Similarly, human subjects can express their values even though they’re the ones who determine those values.
