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Sartre Arguments Of Existentialism

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In Sartre’s lecture at Club Maintenant “Existentialism is a Humanism” Sartre states that “What they (The existential atheists) have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence”1 which seems to mean that humans have no pre-destined purpose and nature in our lives, everything that we become is by our own means and by no higher being. Sartre’s response to criticism over how existentialism focuses on the choices of individuals centers mainly on the points of abandonment, anguish, and despair which is specifically the abandonment by God, which correlates with how the human has no pre-determined purpose, we choose to be who we are by free will. I will be arguing in favor of the way Sartre depicts the soul, human …show more content…

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.”1 In this statement Sartre proposes the idea of human’s having no prior nature since there is no God to conceive of the idea. Along with God not being the one to conceive of human nature, seeing as he’s nonexistent or he’s abandoned us, we humans are what we will ourselves to be during our time on this world. “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.”1 With Sartre’s statement here, he’s stating that we are left alone with no higher being to justify the actions we choose, so we are responsible for every single action that we take upon this planet, every step we take, every breath we take, and at the end where he states that, “That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free,”1 Sartre is stating that our own freedom is essentially a bad thing, since it means that we would be responsible for all the evil’s we do during our

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