Oct 26, 2009
“Existentialism Is a Humanism”
“Existentialism Is a Humanism” is the title of a 1946 lecture given by Jean Paul Sartre in Paris, three years after the publication of his most widely known work, Being and Nothingness. Sartre delivered the lecture in hopes of dispelling some of the contemporary misconceptions of existentialism, which at the time had become a shorthand term for vulgarity and pessimism. In the lecture, Sartre gives one of the most brief and straightforward surveys of his views on existentialism, which he saw as the ultimate philosophy of optimism. His basic claim that man’s existence precedes his essence dismisses the deterministic view of “human nature” as a dictator of fate and instead gives man absolute freedom (and therefore, absolute responsibility) in his life’s endeavors. Through this framework, he addresses the definitions of some of the more maligned terms in the existentialist lexicon — anguish, abandonment, despair — and gives lengthy examples to better illuminate his admittedly radical breed of atheistic existentialism. The term “existentialism” still conjures the spectre of turtleneck-clad beatniks smoking clove cigarettes and drinking red wine, perhaps rightfully so, but a reading of “Existentialism is a Humanism” may dispel at least some of the more substance-based criticisms of the philosophy. – Donny Bridges