Existentialism In Jean-Paul Sartre's Views Of Humanism

Jean-Paul Sartre was a renowned French intellectual whose views of Existentialism arose in the newly liberated Paris after WWII. Sartre’s most well-known essay Existentialism is Humanism introduces main points of his reflections on intellectual thought discussing humans’ radical freedom. In his essay Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre illustrates what existentialism is by acknowledging to what others have mistakenly accused this philosophy of being. Sartre begins by identifying that the key starting point for existentialism is that human existence precedes human essence. Sartre also argues in this essay about the first principle of existentialism, “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Humanism 3). Sartre frequently accuses

For example, if that means a female trapped in a male body, then that individual has the ability to choose to be identified as female to their peers. Sartre says “man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be” (3). This states that we make ourselves into who we are: we are only responsible for ourselves. We cannot blame anything or anyone else for the way we personally turn out because only we have the freedom to choose who we are. Anyone can choose to change aspects about their personal life because all human beings are radically free, God or not. This is summed up well in Sartre’s quote, “Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose” (10). Throughout his essay, Sartre attempts to remain optimistic causing his Existenialism to take a radical stance, specifying that all humans are “condemned to be free”. Ultimately this concludes that freedom is fundamental to being human; for simply being a being-in-itself. However, human beings choose not just for themselves but for everyone else with each choice an individual makes. We do this by setting examples and encouraging others to act