Biography
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris in 1905. As an adult, Sartre was a very gregarious man, known for long philosophical conversations that drifted all day from morning coffee into the evening for mixed drinks. But he was not always able to socialize so much, as he remarked that as a child, he was deprived of friends and thus described his childhood as “suffocating.” Upon his father’s death, his mother and grandfather raised him, and Sartre commented that he grew up quite alone with books. He would eventually go on to study at the prestigious École Normale Supériore in Paris and teach philosophy in advanced high schools. From 1933 to 1934, he studied in Germany, where he would be importantly impacted by the philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger, specifically, phenomenology. He also learned quite a bit of Heidegger’s philosophy while he was a prisoner of war later under the Germans.
The first book he published, the novel Nausea, was a best-seller and immediately solidified his popularity. His magnum opus was Being and Nothingness, and he eventually became so well recognized that he was even awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964—only for Sartre to refuse the honor because he did not want to become ‘a tool of the establishment,’ because, as he proclaimed, “a writer should not be an institution.” This denial elucidates the more controversial side of Sartre, which at times got him into some trouble and led to deteriorated relationships, such as his friendship with fellow existentialist-leaning philosopher Albert Camus.
Jean-Paul Sartre lived a very unconventional life for his time, refusing to follow the common traditions such as marriage or even monogamous relationships for that matter. However, he did have important human connections, such as with the existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, which started as romantic but was mostly a deep friendship. He lived his adult life mostly in hotel rooms and did not have many possessions. He spent most of his days contemplating, discussing, and writing in the cafés of Paris—his favorites were on the Left Bank, known as the Café de Flore, and the Café des Deux Magots.
This lifestyle of his was consistent with his existential phenomenology in the emphasis on individualism and radical human freedom—we are always free to choose, Sartre argued, which many found incredibly liberating. By the time of his death in 1980, he had become so renowned that his funeral was attended by around 50,00 people, a testament to his stature.
Sartre on Reality
While there are many different directions one could take in summarizing Sartre’s philosophy, I would like to start here with the same topic that began the history of philosophy itself: the question of reality. Sartre defines reality as fundamentally comprising two parts: subjects and objects. The former he refers to as the “for-itself,” or human consciousness. The latter he refers to as the “in-itself.” While objects are fixed, human consciousness is not; the for-itself is absolutely free. Our consciousness shows us that there is a world of possibilities for the for-itself, and thus a gap is introduced between objects, which are fixed, and consciousness, which is possibility. That gap is “nothingness” as in there is no-thing there.
Sartre does not try to explore how those two realities came about, in part because of his staunch atheism, which is also central to his position of radical human freedom. But the next important implication to explore here is how it connects to his views on human existence. When we look at other human beings, we think that they must have a for-itself, because having that consciousness is integral to what it means to be human. However, we cannot get inside any other for-itself; we cannot ever get into the consciousness of another human being, so we can only assume that others have that and all we can see of another is individuals as objects.
There are two key problems that this creates. First, there is the problem that only another subject can recognize another subject, yet we cannot fully confirm the subjectivity of another, thereby undermining our own positions as a subject. Second, that creates an ever-present problem of interpersonal conflict as well, as we cannot avoid objectifying others.
Sartre on Human Existence
One of the most summarizing lines of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy is that “existence precedes essence”—this captures his position on human existence and its radical freedom. We are not born with any fixed essence, the choices we freely make in life subsequently shape our essence, which we can make to be whatever we want. Because there is no God for Sartre, nothing is pre-defined. He declared: “Man is nothing else but which he makes of himself.”
But again, there is a paradox here in how we are, as he also proclaimed, “condemned to freedom.” Our consciousness always reminds us that there is a future open to us of possibilities to freely choose from. Thus, there is a part of our self that is a not-yet, which also means that who we currently are is not our full self. As he summarizes it: I-am-what-I-am-not and I-am-not-what-I-am. The denial of this kind of human existence is precisely what Sartre argues leads to one living inauthentically.
Philosophy on what it means to “live authentically” is a hallmark exploration of most labeled as “existentialist philosophers.” When we deny our freedom that we can shape our essences, then we are living in “bad faith” as he described it. Living authentically should be our primary goal, argued Sartre.
Sartre on Human Relationships
An additional challenge of living authentically, we have seen, is other people. “Hell is other People,” Sartre famously declared. We cannot get inside the consciousness of another being, so we can only assume that others have a for-itself. However, only another for-itself can confirm that I too have a for-itself, so we are perennially in this conundrum of not being very sure of much, other than what seems to be something very absurd ultimately about human existence and our relationships with others. We seem to think we have the agency to determine what others mean to us, in our lives, but we also have to assume that others can do the same to us! We need others to understand ourselves, yet we want to believe we have the individual agency to understand ourselves. Our relationships with others, therefore, are distorted, alienating, and objectifying, to name a few problems, but in some ways we also only have ourselves to blame—a paradoxical and problematic existence indeed!
Sartre on Religion
As noted, Sartre’s position on radical freedom is based on his atheist position: as we live in a world without a God, it is up to us to navigate our place. It is up to us to choose and to give meaning to things. This is seen in how our for-itself makes us aware of the gap between fixed objects and future possibilities. His hope is that one ultimately sees more of the optimism in this; in how we are each completely free to write our own autobiographies as we see fit.
If there were a God, argued Sartre, then we would not be free. Sartre also argued that the concept of God is contradictory because the standard Judeo-Christian view is that God is an absolutely, fully realized being, but this implies an “in-itself” in Sartre’s terms, and God cannot be both a fixed entity and have future plans at the same time.
This position also implies that there are no values in the world, which is especially problematic for ethics given the human desire to want to at least assume there is some kind of moral standard we can judge others by. This, in fact, is a common critique raised against existentialism, which only Simone de Beauvoir more formally tries to quell by working on an existentialist-founded ethical philosophy, though some also charge here that she is not fully successful. This problem for an existentialist moral philosophy is seen in the famous example raised by Sartre of the young man who comes to him for advice about either joining the war effort or staying home to care for his aging Mom, to which Sartre replies essentially that he has no advice for him; there is no moral theory that he may use to help him, he must simply decide.
Sartre on Politics
Naturally, Sartre’s atheist position is very problematic for many, but equally problematic was his position on politics. Sartre was a life-long activist yet who believed he was never active enough. He resided on the very left end of the political spectrum as a Marxist. One of his goals in philosophy was to try to reconcile existentialism and Marxism.
This would prove to be quite challenging, however. The Marxist position is teleological in that history is determined, moving in a specific direction that will end in a classless society. This deterministic position conflicts with Sartre’s position on radical freedom. Sartre attempted to work around this problem by arguing that it is not deterministic but rather Marxism is simply the best expression for its time—but this was not accepted by many as a successful resolution. His position was that capitalism, by alienating the individual, makes it look like their freedom is an illusion; it masks the true reality. But, he argued, we can also find a shared subjectivity as a collectively exploited group, moving from an “us-as-object” role to a “we-as-subject” role. This, however, would also conflict with his initial emphasis on individualism as a key feature of his existential phenomenology.
Regardless of where one stands on Sartre and his philosophy, what cannot be denied is his huge impact on the history of philosophy that ensued. He also very much addressed the concerns of his time. He addressed concerns over the alienation and pessimism brought on by two world wars and a great depression, and the forgetting of thus the importance of pondering questions of a directly human concern.
Moreover, his work did not just impact philosophy, it also had a tremendous influence on psychology, art, literature, as well as theology. His work will always remain an important revolt against any attempts to dehumanize human existence.