JEAN PAUL SARTRE

1. JEAN PAUL SARTRE June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980

2. INTRODUCTION : • Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre: 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) born in Paris, was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism, and one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Marxism. His work, in addition to being influential to existentialism and Marxism, has also influenced sociology, critical theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre has also been noted for his relationship with the prominent feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir. • He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honours and that, "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."

3. II – PHILOSOPHY OF MAn • The strategy of “indirect communication” has been an instrument of “Existentialists” since Kierkegaard adopted the use of pseudonyms in his philosophical writings in the early nineteenth century. The point is to communicate a feeling and an attitude that the reader/spectator adopts in which certain existentialist themes such as anguish, responsibility or bad faith are suggested but not dictated as in a lecture. Asked why his plays were performed only in the bourgeois sections of the city, Sartre replied that no bourgeois could leave a performance of one of them without “thinking thoughts traitorous to his class.” The so-called aesthetic “suspension of disbelief” coupled with the tendency to identify with certain characters and to experience their plight vicariously conveys conviction rather than information. And this is what existentialism is chiefly about: challenging the individual to examine their life for intimations of bad faith and to heighten their sensitivity to oppression and exploitation in their world.

4. The case at hand is an artistic way of conveying what Sartre in Being and Nothingness will call “the phenomenon of being.” He agrees with the tradition that “being” or “to be” is not a concept. But if not that, how is it to be indexed? What does it mean “to be”? Sartre's existential phenomenology appeals to certain kinds of experience such as nausea and joy to articulate the “transphenomenal” character of being. Pace Kant, “being” does not denote a realm behind the phenomena that the descriptive method analyzes. Neither is it the object of an “eidetic” reduction (the phenomenological method that would grasp it as an essence). Rather, being accompanies all phenomena as their existential dimension. But this dimension is revealed by certain experiences such as that of the utter contingency which Roquentin felt. This is scarcely rationalism, but neither is it mysticism. Anyone can experience this contingency and, once brought to reflective awareness, can ponder its implications. What this novel does imaginatively, Being and Nothingness, subtitled “A Phenomenological Ontology,” pursues conceptually, though with the aid of phenomenological “arguments,” as we have seen.

5. CONCEPT Of PhILOSOPHY • Is there a common thread to these specific features of Sartre’s phenomenological approach? Sartre’s choice of topics for phenomenological analysis suggests an interest in the phenomenology of what it is to be human, rather than in the world as such. This privileging of the human dimension has parallels with Heidegger’s focus upon Dasein in tackling the question of Being. This aspect of Heidegger’s work is that which can properly be called existential insofar as Dasein’s way of being is essentially distinct from that of any other being. This characterisation is particularly apt for Sartre’s work, in that his phenomenological analyses do not serve a deeper ontological purpose as they do for Heidegger who distanced himself from any existential labelling. Thus, in his “Letter on Humanism”, Heidegger reminds us that the analysis of Dasein is only one chapter in the enquiry into the question of Being. For Heidegger, Sartre’s humanism is one more metaphysical perspective which does not return to the deeper issue of the meaning of Being. • Sartre sets up his own picture of the individual human being by first getting rid of its grounding in a stable ego. As Sartre later puts it in Existentialism is a Humanism, to be human is characterised by an existence that precedes its essence. As such, existence is problematic, and it is towards the development of a full existentialist theory of what it is to be human that Sartre’s work logically evolves. In relation to what will become Being and Nothingness, Sartre’s early works can be seen as providing important preparatory material for an existential account of being human. But the distinctiveness of Sartre’s approach to understanding human existence is ultimately guided by his ethical interest. In particular, this accounts for his privileging of a strong notion of freedom which we shall see to be fundamentally at odds with Heidegger’s analysis. Thus the nature of Sartre’s topics of analysis, his theory of the ego and his ethical aims all characterise the development of an existential phenomenology. Let us now examine the central themes of this theory as they are presented in Being and Nothingness.

6. FAMOUS LINEs • Existence is prior to essence. Man is nothing at birth and throughout his life he is no more than the sum of his past commitments. To believe in anything outside his own will is to be guilty of 'bad Faith.' Existentialist despair and anguish is the acknowledgement that man is condemned to freedom. There is no God, so man must rely upon his own fallible will and moral insight. He cannot escape choosing. • Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. • Hell is other people. • Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

7. III- CONCLUSION • Sartre’s existentialist understanding of what it is to be human can be summarised in his view that the underlying motivation for action is to be found in the nature of consciousness which is a desire for being. It is up to each agent to exercise his freedom in such a way that he does not lose sight of his existence as a facticity, as well as a free human being. In so doing, he will come to understand more about the original choice which his whole life represents, and thus about the values that are thereby projected. Such an understanding is only obtained through living this particular life and avoiding the pitfalls of strategies of self-deceit such as bad faith. This authentic option for human life represents the realisation of a universal in the singularity of a human life.