Sartre and the Meaning of Human Existence

Man has no one telling him what to do, there may be laws but they are man made and because they man made no one has true control over man. Existentialism is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will. To Sartre, saying that som... ... middle of paper ... ...vious objections. In this paper argued that man creates their own essence through their choices and that our values and choices are important because they allow man to be free and create their own existence. I did this first by explaining Jean-Paul Sartre’s quote, then by thoroughly stating Sartre’s theory, and then by opposing objections raised against Sartre’s theory.

We are always under the shadow of anxiety; higher responsibility leads to higher anxiety. The pursuit of being leads to an awareness of nothingness, nothingness to an awareness of freedom, freedom to bad faith and bad faith to the being of consciousness which provides the condition for its own possibility. Concluding his thought, Sartre says that existentialism is not pessimism. He says that existentialism does not aim at plunging us into despair: its final goal is to prepare us through anguish, abandonment and despair for a genuine life, and it is basically concerned with the human condition as a complete form of choice. The fundamental issue, therefore, is an authentic meaning of life.

Passion is the criterion for all moral judgments because there are no absolute moral values. Moral values differ from one person to the next because they are based on human experience. Passions, along with moral judgments, exist for each man. One cannot tell another that what they feel is wrong or unreasonable. It is a personal experience and no one can judge one’s sentiments or feelings.

I am creating a certain image of my own choosing. In choosing myself is choose man." (1) He is saying that man creates his own image of the self and it is different for all men. The belief that existence precedes essence directly ties into the fact that the atheistic existentialist believes that there is no god. They believe that there is no human nature and that humans are inherently free.

The fact is that man lives by only one rule: to preserve the right to preserve. Man lives to kill or be killed. Every man acts as a singular body that has the duty to preserve his own successful end means. Freedom is an obligation to preserve and defend yo... ... middle of paper ... ... These ideas Hobbes presents explain why his account of human nature is deeply pessimistic of man.

Man is nothing other than his own project. Sartre writes that man is the one who gives himself purpose and creates himself. Sartre writes “Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.” (Sartre 22). Sartre is saying that man is not what he considers himself to be, he is what he does, and he is constantly changing. Man cannot be what he regards himself as unless what he considers himself to be is what he has already completed or what he is currently doing.

To an existentialist, if you answer the question, then you've missed the whole point. Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts (Bigelow 134). Basically, existentialism addresses man's existence. An existentialist believes that man does not exist under God or as part of a society or race. Man does exist, and that is all.

In the end, there is really no reason to believe in the existence of existence, if Hume’s deductions are to be taken quite so seriously. Of course, if that were to be done, none could live as they do. Since Hume himself is concerned with a philosophy that concerns the everyday individual, not even he can truly accept that nothing exists. It is when he reaches this point himself that he realizes one can “be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man,” (qtd. in Jones 351).

Nothingness in A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway Man is often plagued by the question of his own existence. Existentialism is a subjective philosophy that is centered upon the examination of man’s existence, emphasizing the liberation, responsibility, and usually the solitude of the individual. It focuses on individuals finding a reason for living within themselves. The philosophy forces man to make choices for himself, on the premise that nothing is preordained, there is no fate. Men must find a truth in themselves, a truth that they must be able to live for.

Thus, there ensues the temptation for man to live a life of inauthenticity, by leaning on preset rules or guidelines, and objective norms. This would consist the idea of bad faith. Bad faith is pretending that we are not free and responsible for what we are and do, when in fact we know that we are. It is also pretending that we are causally determined as inanimate things are, and that therefore we have no freedom and are not responsible for our lives, as victims of circumstances. To have a truly authentic existence, Sartre dictates that we live according to our own beliefs, that we insert meaning into the acts that we do, not finding meaning from what other people say.