“Things must be accepted as they are. What is more, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less that this: Life has no meaning a priori. Life itself is nothing until it is lived, it is we who give it meaning, and value is nothing more than the meaning that we give it.”

Jean-Paul Sartre.

Introduction:

It is not an exaggeration to say that Jean-Paul Sartre is the most famous philosopher of the twentieth century. He was also among the most controversial thinkers, both for the right and the wrong reasons. He was attacked by Catholics, communists, libertarians, humanitarians, Nazis, nationalists, traditionalists, and even some of those contemporary existentialists who preceded him. He was also embraced by humanists, liberals, poets, socialists, existentialists, and men of letters both in France and abroad. He was attacked for excluding God from the picture of morality, and for not being enough of a pro-communist. He was also detested by the Frenchmen on the frontiers, defying and resisting the Nazi occupation. He was championed by humanitarians of the Disarmament League, and the humanists of the world.

              The philosopher and author, Jean-Paul Sartre was initially trained in psychology, and psychoanalysis in particular. But his interest in the human mind paved the way for philosophy, phenomenology, and existentialism which were becoming ever more important in his time. His first books were mostly concerned with phenomenology, and only later in his mid-career did he take existentialism seriously with the publication of his magnum opus, Being and Nothingness [1].

This book, Existentialism is a Humanism, is a transcripted lecture he presented in Paris after its liberation, in October of 1945. It is the political position of the philosophical movement as Sartre imagined it, and the lecture’s intent is twofold: To defend Existentialism against its critics, and to clarify that the school allowed a wide spectrum of political positions, many of which are humanitarian, and humanistic. Its humanism is its concern with humans qua humans, and its humanitarianism follows from man’s natural position of being pro-humanity in the humanistic sense.

The book [2] consists of three major segments. The transcripted lecture is printed as a whole, followed by a Q&A session, and it closes with Sartre’s beautiful critique of Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger. I often say that those who want to learn how to read a book should read Nietzsche’s analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, and Sartre’s review of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I should add this commentary to the list. It is a scholarly dissection of Camus’ text and adds more to the beauty that one can find in the book. It should succeed anyone’s reading and interpretation of the novel, and it should be read as Sartre’s view and not the dictated message the book aims to offer. The novel offers freedom as much as Sartre ever does, and that should be kept in mind. Finally, the middle section is irrelevant to the book, since most of it is an arbitrary and confused attack on the author where the last person to ask takes several pages to formulate his attacks and quasi-questions, so it can be ignored here without any loss to the contents.

Existentialism is a Humanism:

Existentialism, as Sartre perceived it, can be summarized by the jazzy statement, ‘existence precedes essence.’ The statement, to those who are familiar with the Russian philosopher, Ayn Rand, is the essence of human liberty from social expectations. In fact, it is a declaration of independence from edicts imposed both by God on man [3], and by society on man. It is a liberation from an essence that we tend to accept as social creatures in a world hellbent on producing conformity. In fact, the book is easy on the eyes, and one goes through it with ease in a sitting, but there is nothing that is made easy here. Once one understands the core ideas, one freezes upon realizing that one is free, and now that he is free, he is no freer from responsibility. Objects are bound by the laws of nature and society, and so is man. But there is a freedom in man that may not be found in any other thing: That freedom to bear responsibility for one’s action, that binding responsibility once an action is done whether one is held liable or not. Neither legal prosecution nor common praise alleviates one’s conscience from his choices. Only in bad faith does man convince himself that he is relieved of his duty towards himself. Man bears his choices alone, and once man realizes this, man gains as much as he loses in freedom. As Anthony Kenny puts it [4]: “Human freedom creates a fissure in the world of things.”

The author has to start by clarifying the term existentialists, which has lost much of its meaning through its abuse in garbing all gloom and darkness, all mystery, all fundamental questioning of life and the world by its name. (Indeed, the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, has all but used the word to mean sexually appealing, in his poem [5] ‘The Existentialist Woman.’( One can start from Aristotle’s final cause: The cause for which an object is made to serve. Existentialism asserts that whereas a hammer and a key have final causes, a human being does not. A key is conceived in the mind before its conception. Even if a man was, i.e., even God, according to Sartre, created to serve a purpose, and even if he was conceived in the womb to help in his father’s garage, that cannot serve as man’s final cause once he himself decides that that will not be his final cause. In fact, by the very fact of him not choosing to be existentially conscious, he has made the choice already of serving that final cause intended by third parties. Man is free in the sense that he chooses what he wants to be. He may be compelled, punished by death upon disagreeing to comply, yet he retains that freedom to act otherwise: To choose death against tyranny and subjugation. To that extent is man free, even when his liberty is lost. The act of choice is the fundamental principle of existentialism, as Sartre has it [6] “man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself.” His final cause is ultimately a thing of his choosing, and he wills it into existence. He continues [7], “if man as existentialists conceive of him cannot be defined, it is because, to begin with, he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.” But that is only the first half of what existentialism is for Sartre. The other half is something many thinkers of the same school fundamentally differ with, especially since it implies more than what they’re willing to concede. In fact, to many thinkers, the second clause contradicts the whole spirit of freedom that existentialism holds when it weds itself to its humanitarian ideal: That when we choose, qua freemen, we choose for ourselves but that very act of choice creates an image of man that we defend by defending ourselves. Any man who supports that kind of freedom is really an enemy of the first sense of freedom since one is confined to a good that he aims to represent mankind. My freedom of choice must give leeway to that ideal of man that my choice should allow [8]. I am in the end, responsible not only for myself but for mankind, and for whatever that responsibility entails. May it be communism for some, as Sartre sees it? The question would only remain of what should the humanitarian existentialists do to those who oppose the humanitarian solutions. (For example, Sartre thought that Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was ‘a dangerous element’ misrepresenting the communism that would free man from the exploitation and the oppression of the market [9].) This second fundamental clause that Sartre introduces here corrupts the original existential anguish of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche where we suffer from the abundance of choice and sealing our own fates through our actions: A harrowing, yet necessary action the free man must take.

Conclusion:

I read this book for a book club I made with my friend, Mubarak Kamal, who loved Sartre from an early age and recommended his books to me since our days at Kuwait University. I started reading this book in a McDonald’s while eating French fries, thinking that I would be having a light read. I was expecting to be infuriated by Sartre’s message. I was not. In fact, I was shocked at how much I have found myself and Mubarak in this book. I immediately told myself that it was as if I was reading his own writing. It reminded me of the writings of Ayn Rand which we both enjoyed reading. However, upon the second reading, as I am writing this review, I discovered that my first reading was severely lacking, especially concerning the humanitarian message Sartre sought to present here. At first, his humanitarianism was to be expected, and it was accepted. But that view could not withstand scrutiny. When I reread it, I was shocked at what he had to say, and how he contradicted the whole spirit of existential freedom just to make room for his political and humanitarian disposition. Sartre has betrayed himself and the movement in trying to justify it to his peers; those whom he wanted so much to unshackle us from their expectations and coercions.

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[1] An early philosophical bibliography (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/):
1. The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (1936)
2. The Imagination (1936)
3. The Emotions: Outline of a Theory (1939)
4. The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination (1940)
5. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1943)
6. Existentialism is a Humanism (1946)
[2] Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, Yale University Press, 2007.
[3] Ibid, pp. 53 – 54: “Even if God were to exist, it would make no difference — that is our point of view. It is not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the real problem is not one of his existence; what man needs is to rediscover himself and to comprehend that nothing can save him from himself, not even valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense, existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only in bad faith — in confusing their own despair with ours that Christians are able to assert that we are ‘without hope.’”
[4] Anthony Kenny, Philosophy in the Modern World, Oxford University Press, 2007.
[5] Nizar Qabbani, The Existentialist Woman: https://www.nizariat.com/poetry.php?id=331
[6] Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 22.
[7] Ibid, p. 22.
[8] Ibid, pp. 23 – 25.
[9] Daniel J. Mahoney, Two Critics of the Ideological “Lie”: Raymond Aron and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. From The VoegelinView, 2014: https://voegelinview.com/two-critics-of-the-ideological-lie-raymond-arons-encounter-with-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/.

Rochester, New York,
June, 2022.