Written: Lecture given in 1946
Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman
Meridian Publishing Company, 1989
First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956
Translator: Philip Mairet
Copyright: reproduced under the “Fair Use” provisions
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre
My purpose here is to offer a defence of existentialism against several
reproaches that have been laid against it.
First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of
despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any
action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a
contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this
would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach
made by the Communists.
From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is
ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base
to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to
the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the Catholic
critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and
from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity
of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists,
is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity – upon the Cartesian “I
think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a
position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other men who
exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.
From the Christian side, we are reproached as people who deny the reality and
seriousness of human affairs. For since we ignore the commandments of God
and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing remains but what is strictly
voluntary. Everyone can do what he likes, and will be incapable, from such a
point of view, of condemning either the point of view or the action of anyone
else.
It is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavour to reply today; that is
why I have entitled this brief exposition “Existentialism is a Humanism.”
Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this connection, but we
shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any case, we can begin by
saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does
render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and
every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. The
essential charge laid against us is, of course, that of over-emphasis upon the
evil side of human life. I have lately been told of a lady who, whenever she
lets slip a vulgar expression in a moment of nervousness, excuses herself by
exclaiming, “I believe I am becoming an existentialist.” So it appears that
ugliness is being identified with existentialism. That is why some people say
we are “naturalistic,” and if we are, it is strange to see how much we
scandalise and horrify them, for no one seems to be much frightened or
humiliated nowadays by what is properly called naturalism. Those who can
quite well keep down a novel by Zola such as La Terre are sickened as soon as
they read an existentialist novel. Those who appeal to the wisdom of the
people – which is a sad wisdom – find ours sadder still. And yet, what could
be more disillusioned than such sayings as “Charity begins at home” or
“Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down and he’ll do
you homage”? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to this
effect, and they all mean much the same – that you must not oppose the
powers that be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not
meddle in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in
accordance with some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking
which has not the support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration;
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”; Page 1 of 13
and that since experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil,
there must be firm rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It
is, however, the people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and,
whenever they are told of some more or less repulsive action, say “How like
human nature!” – it is these very people, always harping upon realism, who
complain that existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their
excessive protests make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much
our pessimism, but, much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is
alarming in the doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is – is it not? –
that it confronts man with a possibility of choice. To verify this, let us review
the whole question upon the strictly philosophic level. What, then, is this that
we call existentialism?
Most of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if
required to explain its meaning. For since it has become fashionable, people
cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is “existentialist.” A
columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,” and, indeed, the word
is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything
at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel doctrine such as that of
surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the latest scandal or movement
now seize upon this philosophy in which, however, they can find nothing to
their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the least scandalous and the
most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians and philosophers. All the
same, it can easily be defined.
The question is only complicated because there are two kinds of
existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I
shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the
other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well
as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply
the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will,
that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?
If one considers an article of manufacture as, for example, a book or a paperknife – one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of
it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a paper-knife and to
the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that conception and
is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife is at the same time an article
producible in a certain manner and one which, on the other hand, serves a
definite purpose, for one cannot suppose that a man would produce a paperknife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the paperknife that
its essence – that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which
made its production and its definition possible – precedes its existence. The
presence of such-and-such a paper-knife or book is thus determined before my
eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, and
we can say that production precedes existence.
When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the
time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering,
whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of Leibnitz himself, we
always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at
least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is
creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to
that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to
a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paperknife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the
realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding.
In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the notion of God is
suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is prior to existence;
something of that idea we still find everywhere, in Diderot, in Voltaire and
even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that “human nature,” which is
the conception of human being, is found in every man; which means that each
man is a particular example of a universal conception, the conception of Man.
In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in
the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”; Page 2 of 13
and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the essence of man
precedes that historic existence which we confront in experience.
Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater
consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose
existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be
defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the
human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence?
We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the
world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is
not definable, 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. Thus, there
is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man
simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is
what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills
to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he
makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. And this is what
people call its “subjectivity,” using the word as a reproach against us. But
what do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a
stone or a table? For we mean to say that man primarily exists – that man is,
before all else, something which propels itself towards a future and is aware
that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life,
instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before that
projection of the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence:
man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. Not,
however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing
or willing is a conscious decision taken – much more often than not – after we
have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write a book
or to marry – but in such a case what is usually called my will is probably a
manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision. If, however, it is true
that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the
first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself
as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his
own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do
not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is
responsible for all men. The word “subjectivism” is to be understood in two
senses, and our adversaries play upon only one of them. Subjectivism means,
on the one hand, the freedom of the individual subject and, on the other, that
man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It is the latter which is the deeper
meaning of existentialism. When we say that man chooses himself, we do
mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that
in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions
a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one
which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he
believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to
affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever to choose the
worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us
unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will
to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all
and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus
much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I
am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a
Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that
resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s
kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view.
Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a
commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a more personal case, I
decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision proceeds
simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby
committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of
monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am
creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning
myself I fashion man.
This may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms – perhaps a
little grandiloquent – as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you will soon
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”; Page 3 of 13
see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? – The existentialist
frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows: When a man
commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not only choosing what
he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole
of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of
complete and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, who show no
such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising their anguish or
are in flight from it. Certainly, many people think that in what they are doing
they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you ask them, “What
would happen if everyone did so?” they shrug their shoulders and reply,
“Everyone does not do so.” But in truth, one ought always to ask oneself what
would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that
disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who lies in
self-excuse, by saying “Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in his
conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies. By
its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that
Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham.” You know the story: An angel
commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son; and obedience was obligatory, if it
really was an angel who had appeared and said, “Thou, Abraham, shalt
sacrifice thy son.” But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it
was indeed an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are
the proofs? A certain mad woman who suffered from hallucinations said that
people were telephoning to her, and giving her orders. The doctor asked, “But
who is it that speaks to you?” She replied: “He says it is God.” And what,
indeed, could prove to her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is
the proof that it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they
proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness or
some pathological condition? Who can prove that they are really addressed to
me?
Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own
choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any proof
whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks to me, it
is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is not that of an
angel. If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to
say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am Abraham:
nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions which are
examples. Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race
had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct
accordingly. So every man ought to say, “Am I really a man who has the right
to act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do.” If a man
does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the anguish with
which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or
inaction. It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those
who have borne responsibilities. When, for instance, a military leader takes
upon himself the responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to
their death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt
under a higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require
interpretation by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten,
fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain
anguish. All leaders know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the
contrary it is the very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that
there is a plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize
that it has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind
which existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit
through direct responsibility towards other men who are concerned. Far from
being a screen which could separate us from action, it is a condition of action
itself.
And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we
only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the
consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly
opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at
the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors
endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this:
God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”; Page 4 of 13
we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that
certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence
ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to
lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to
do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values
exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there
is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in
France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we
shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we
shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away
quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely
embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all
possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be
any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think
it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or
must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men.
Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be
permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is
indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for
he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He
discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence
precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference
to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism
– man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist,
are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our
behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm
of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without
excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free.
Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty,
and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for
everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of
passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon
which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is
an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither
will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being
vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself
interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any
support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. As
Ponge has written in a very fine article, “Man is the future of man.” That is
exactly true. Only, if one took this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven,
that God knows what it is, it would be false, for then it would no longer even
be a future. If, however, it means that, whatever man may now appear to be,
there is a future to be fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him – then it is a
true saying. But in the present one is forsaken.
As an example by which you may the better understand this state of
abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in
the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and
was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in
the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment
somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was
living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by
the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man.
But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the
Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He
fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance –
or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that,
concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf
would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he
did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish
like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England
he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through
Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office
to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very
different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards
only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”; Page 5 of 13
greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it
might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between
two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal
devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more
debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him
to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with
charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which
is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe
the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful
aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the
precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer
to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian
ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well;
if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a
means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who
are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid
of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my
mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to
determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains
but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when
I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which
it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my
mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all
my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I
feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the
strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined
precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a
certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I
cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough
to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate
the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is
defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I
find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
Moreover, as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is play-acting and
one which is vital are two things that are hardly distinguishable one from
another. To decide that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a
comedy the upshot of which is that I do so – these are nearly the same thing.
In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that one does; therefore I
cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek
within myself for an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some
ethic, formulae that will enable me to act. You may say that the youth did, at
least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But if you seek counsel – from a
priest, for example you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already
knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other words, to choose an
adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice. If you are a
Christian, you will say, consult a priest; but there are collaborationists, priests
who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide to turn: which will you
choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the
collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to
receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him,
and I had but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose, that is to say,
invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no
signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, “Oh, but they
are!” Very well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the
signs. While I was imprisoned, I made the acquaintance of a somewhat
remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member of that order in the
following manner. In his life he had suffered a succession of rather severe
setbacks. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him in poverty, and
he had been awarded a free scholarship in a religious institution, where he had
been made continually to feel that he was accepted for charity’s sake, and, in
consequence, he had been denied several of those distinctions and honours
which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to grief in a
sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two – this was a trifle in itself, but it
was the last drop that overflowed his cup – he failed in his military
examination. This young man, then, could regard himself as a total failure: it
was a sign – but a sign of what? He might have taken refuge in bitterness or
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”; Page 6 of 13
despair. But he took it – very cleverly for him – as a sign that he was not
intended for secular success, and that only the attainments of religion, those of
sanctity and of faith, were accessible to him. He interpreted his record as a
message from God, and became a member of the Order. Who can doubt but
that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and his alone? One
could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series of reverses –
as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For
the decipherment of the sign, however, he bears the entire responsibility. That
is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with
this abandonment goes anguish.
As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely
means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our
wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible.
Whenever one wills anything, there are always these elements of probability.
If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by
tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the
tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of possibilities; but one does
not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that are strictly concerned in
one’s action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities under consideration
cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God
and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to
my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what
he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.
Marxists, to whom I have said this, have answered: “Your action is limited,
obviously, by your death; but you can rely upon the help of others. That is,
you can count both upon what the others are doing to help you elsewhere, as
in China and in Russia, and upon what they will do later, after your death, to
take up your action and carry it forward to its final accomplishment which
will be the revolution. Moreover you must rely upon this; not to do so is
immoral.” To this I rejoin, first, that I shall always count upon my comradesin-arms in the struggle, in so far as they are committed, as I am, to a definite,
common cause; and in the unity of a party or a group which I can more or less
control – that is, in which I am enrolled as a militant and whose movements at
every moment are known to me. In that respect, to rely upon the unity and the
will of the party is exactly like my reckoning that the train will run to time or
that the tram will not be derailed. But I cannot count upon men whom I do not
know, I cannot base my confidence upon human goodness or upon man’s
interest in the good of society, seeing that man is free and that there is no
human nature which I can take as foundational. I do not know where the
Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it as an example in so far
as it is evident, today, that the proletariat plays a part in Russia which it has
attained in no other nation. But I cannot affirm that this will necessarily lead
to the triumph of the proletariat: I must confine myself to what I can see. Nor
can I be sure that comrades-in-arms will take up my work after my death and
carry it to the maximum perfection, seeing that those men are free agents and
will freely decide, tomorrow, what man is then to be. Tomorrow, after my
death, some men may decide to establish Fascism, and the others may be so
cowardly or so slack as to let them do so. If so, Fascism will then be the truth
of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be such as men
have decided they shall be. Does that mean that I should abandon myself to
quietism? No. First I ought to commit myself and then act my commitment,
according to the time-honoured formula that “one need not hope in order to
undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I should not belong to a party,
but only that I should be without illusion and that I should do what I can. For
instance, if I ask myself “Will the social ideal as such, ever become a reality?”
I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be in my power to make it so, I
shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing.
Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.”
The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since
it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and
adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he
realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions,
nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can well understand why some
people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to
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sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been
against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I
admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I
never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any
very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had
no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man
I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities,
inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me
with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my
actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from
the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested
in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.
The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of
Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why
should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when
that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws
his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought
may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the
other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is
reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as
deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they
define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are
nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged
solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his
definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a
series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations
that constitute these undertakings.
behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity, or by the action of
their environment upon them, or by determining factors, psychic or organic.
People would be reassured, they would say, “You see, that is what we are like,
no one can do anything about it.” But the existentialist, when he portrays a
coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is not like that on
account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that
through his physiological organism; he is like that because he has made
himself into a coward by actions. There is no such thing as a cowardly
temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called
impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. But the man whose
blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice is the
act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward
is defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with
horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What
people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero. One of the
charges most often laid against the Chemins de la Liberté is something like
this: “But, after all, these people being so base, how can you make them into
heroes?” That objection is really rather comic, for it implies that people are
born heroes: and that is, at bottom, what such people would like to think. If
you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing about it
and you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are born
heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives eating
and drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes
himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a
possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being
a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case
or particular action that you are committed altogether.
In the light of all this, what people reproach us with is not, after all, our
pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If people condemn our works of
fiction, in which we describe characters that are base, weak, cowardly and
sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only because those characters are base,
weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola, we showed that the
We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the reproaches against
existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be regarded as a philosophy of
quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as a pessimistic description of
man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny of man is placed within
himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man from action since it tells him
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that there is no hope except in his action, and that the one thing which permits
him to have life is the deed. Upon this level therefore, what we are
considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment. However, we are still
reproached, upon these few data, for confining man within his individual
subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.
Our point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the individual, and that
for strictly philosophic reasons. It is not because we are bourgeois, but
because we seek to base our teaching upon the truth, and not upon a collection
of fine theories, full of hope but lacking real foundations. And at the point of
departure there cannot be any other truth than this, I think, therefore I am,
which is the absolute truth of consciousness as it attains to itself. Every theory
which begins with man, outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory
which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito, all
objects are no more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which is
not attached to a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the
probable one must possess the true. Before there can be any truth whatever,
then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple,
easily attained and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one’s
immediate sense of one’s self.
In the second place, this theory alone is compatible with the dignity of man, it
is the only one which does not make man into an object. All kinds of
materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an object – that
is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different from the patterns
of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. Our
aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in
distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus
postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as
we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that one discovers in the
cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes,
contrary to that of Kant, when we say “I think” we are attaining to ourselves
in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of
ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also
discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own
existence. He recognises that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one
says one is spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise
him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except
through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence,
and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these
conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation
of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or
will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find
ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in
this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are.
Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every man a
universal essence that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless a
human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the thinkers of today
are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the nature of man.
By his condition they understand, with more or less clarity, all the limitations
which a priori define man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His
historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society
or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the
necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there. These
limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a
subjective and an objective aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with
them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and subjective
because they are lived and are nothing if man does not live them – if, that is to
say, he does not freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them.
And, diverse though man’s purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly
foreign to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt either
to surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to
accommodate oneself to them. Consequently every purpose, however
individual it may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that of a
Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. To say it can
be understood, means that the European of 1945 may be striving out of a
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certain situation towards the same limitations in the same way, and that he
may reconceive in himself the purpose of the Chinese, of the Indian or the
African. In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose
is comprehensible to every man. Not that this or that purpose defines man for
ever, but that it may be entertained again and again. There is always some way
of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has
sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is a human
universality, but it is not something given; it is being perpetually made. I make
this universality in choosing myself; I also make it by understanding the
purpose of any other man, of whatever epoch. This absoluteness of the act of
choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.
What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the absolute character
of the free commitment, by which every man realises himself in realising a
type of humanity – a commitment always understandable, to no matter whom
in no matter what epoch – and its bearing upon the relativity of the cultural
pattern which may result from such absolute commitment. One must observe
equally the relativity of Cartesianism and the absolute character of the
Cartesian commitment. In this sense you may say, if you like, that every one
of us makes the absolute by breathing, by eating, by sleeping or by behaving
in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between free being – being
as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence – and absolute being. And
there is no difference whatever between being as an absolute, temporarily
localised that is, localised in history – and universally intelligible being.
This does not completely refute the charge of subjectivism. Indeed that
objection appears in several other forms, of which the first is as follows.
People say to us, “Then it does not matter what you do,” and they say this in
various ways.
First they tax us with anarchy; then they say, “You cannot judge others, for
there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another”; finally, they may
say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of yours, you give
away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.” These three are
not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it does not matter what
you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is possible, but what is not
possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not
choose, that is still a choice. This, although it may appear merely formal, is of
great importance as a limit to fantasy and caprice. For, when I confront a real
situation – for example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a
being of the other sex and able to have children – I am obliged to choose my
attitude to it, and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which,
in committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice
is determined by no a priori value whatever, it can have nothing to do with
caprice: and if anyone thinks that this is only Gide’s theory of the acte gratuit
over again, he has failed to see the enormous difference between this theory
and that of Gide. Gide does not know what a situation is, his “act” is one of
pure caprice. In our view, on the contrary, man finds himself in an organised
situation in which he is himself involved: his choice involves mankind in its
entirety, and he cannot avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he
must marry without having children, or he must marry and have children. In
any case, and whichever he may choose, it is impossible for him, in respect of
this situation, not to take complete responsibility. Doubtless he chooses
without reference to any pre-established value, but it is unjust to tax him with
caprice. Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the
construction of a work of art.
But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we are not
propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous
enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of art only by way
of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an artist, when
he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori. Does one ever
ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As everyone knows, there is no
pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist applies himself to the
composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to be made is precisely
that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are no aesthetic
values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course in the
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coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and the
finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one
cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We
are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as
irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand
very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was
painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.
It is the same upon the plane of morality. There is this in common between art
and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We
cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done. I think it was made
sufficiently clear to you in the case of that student who came to see me, that to
whatever ethical system he might appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could
find no sort of guidance whatever; he was obliged to invent the law for
himself. Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with his
mother – that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete charity
as his moral foundations – would be making an irresponsible choice, nor
could we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man
makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice
of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of
circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments;
it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice.
In the second place, people say to us, “You are unable to judge others.” This is
true in one sense and false in another. It is true in this sense, that whenever a
man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all
sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer
another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in progress. Progress
implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is
always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The
moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice between
slavery and anti-slavery – from the time of the war of Secession, for example,
until the present moment when one chooses between the M.R.P. [Mouvement
Republicain Poputaire] and the Communists.
We can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said, one chooses in view of others,
and in view of others one chooses himself. One can judge, first – and perhaps
this is not a judgment of value, but it is a logical judgment – that in certain
cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others upon the truth. One can
judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. Since we have defined the
situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help, any
man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some
deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver. One may object: “But why should he
not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that it is not for me to judge him
morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot avoid
pronouncing a judgment of truth. The self-deception is evidently a falsehood,
because it is a dissimulation of man’s complete liberty of commitment. Upon
this same level, I say that it is also a self-deception if I choose to declare that
certain values are incumbent upon me; I am in contradiction with myself if I
will these values and at the same time say that they impose themselves upon
me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I wish to deceive myself?” I answer,
“There is no reason why you should not, but I declare that you are doing so,
and that the attitude of strict consistency alone is that of good faith.”
Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment. For I declare that freedom,
in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself;
and when once a man has seen that values depend upon himself, in that state
of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and that is freedom as the
foundation of all values. That does not mean that he wills it in the abstract: it
simply means that the actions of men of good faith have, as their ultimate
significance, the quest of freedom itself as such. A man who belongs to some
communist or revolutionary society wills certain concrete ends, which imply
the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in community. We will freedom
for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus
willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of
others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously,
freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon
as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same
time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others
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equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely authentic, that
man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that he is a free
being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at the same
time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in the name of
that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments
upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of
their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this total
freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall call
cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is
merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth – I shall call
scum. But neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane
of strict authenticity. Thus, although the content of morality is variable, a
certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a will
both to itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that the
formal and the universal suffice for the constitution of a morality. We think,
on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when we
come to defining action. To take once again the case of that student; by what
authority, in the name of what golden rule of morality, do you think he could
have decided, in perfect peace of mind, either to abandon his mother or to
remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always
concrete, and therefore unpredictable; it has always to be invented. The one
thing that counts, is to know whether the invention is made in the name of
freedom.
Let us, for example, examine the two following cases, and you will see how
far they are similar in spite of their difference. Let us take The Mill on the
Floss. We find here a certain young woman, Maggie Tulliver, who is an
incarnation of the value of passion and is aware of it. She is in love with a
young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an insignificant young
woman. This Maggie Tulliver, instead of heedlessly seeking her own
happiness, chooses in the name of human solidarity to sacrifice herself and to
give up the man she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in Stendhal’s
Chartreuse de Parme, believing that it is passion which endows man with his
real value, would have declared that a grand passion justifies its sacrifices,
and must be preferred to the banality of such conjugal love as would unite
Stephen to the little goose he was engaged to marry. It is the latter that she
would have chosen to sacrifice in realising her own happiness, and, as
Stendhal shows, she would also sacrifice herself upon the plane of passion if
life made that demand upon her. Here we are facing two clearly opposed
moralities; but I claim that they are equivalent, seeing that in both cases the
overruling aim is freedom. You can imagine two attitudes exactly similar in
effect, in that one girl might prefer, in resignation, to give up her lover while
the other preferred, in fulfilment of sexual desire, to ignore the prior
engagement of the man she loved; and, externally, these two cases might
appear the same as the two we have just cited, while being in fact entirely
different. The attitude of La Sanseverina is much nearer to that of Maggie
Tulliver than to one of careless greed. Thus, you see, the second objection is
at once true and false. One can choose anything, but only if it is upon the
plane of free commitment.
The third objection, stated by saying, “You take with one hand what you give
with the other,” means, at bottom, “your values are not serious, since you
choose them yourselves.” To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it
should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father, there must be somebody
to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to say that
we invent values means neither more nor less than this; that there is no sense
in life a priori. 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. Therefore,
you can see that there is a possibility of creating a human community. I have
been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism:
people have said to me, “But you have written in your Nausée that the
humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism,
why do you now go back upon that?” In reality, the word humanism has two
very different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which
upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this
sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours,
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in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in
an airplane, “Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I personally
have not built aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and
that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and
honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that
we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of
certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse
would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare
that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do – at
least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should
pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment
of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still
to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something
to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult
of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must
be said – in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is
this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing
himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it
is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is
thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his selfsurpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no
other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity.
This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that
God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in
such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human
universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism,
because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself,
thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not
by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim
which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can
realize himself as truly human.
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than
the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an
attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its
intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by
despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of unbelief, the despair
of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the
sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of
God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no
difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we
think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to
find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself,
not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is
optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by
confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as
without hope.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
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