Existentialism Is a Humanism PDF

# Existentialism is a Humanism ## Jean-Paul Sartre - Born in 1905, in Paris - Became one of the most famous writers and philosophers of the 20th century - Declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 ## Being in Itself vs. Being for Itself 1. **Being in itself:** the essence found in objects....

# Existentialism is a Humanism ## Jean-Paul Sartre - Born in 1905, in Paris - Became one of the most famous writers and philosophers of the 20th century - Declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 ## Being in Itself vs. Being for Itself 1. **Being in itself:** the essence found in objects. - A can opener derives its essence from its use of opening cans. - A rock is a rock in itself no matter what you do to it. - The essence is locked into their uses. 2. **Being for itself:** the human person can be both a being in itself and being for itself. - Locked into form like height, weight, race, and gender. - Can have the freedom to choose their own essence and purpose of existence. - This process is a by-product of discerning – a fundamental trait of consciousness. ## Man is No-thing-ness - Man is not a thing and possesses no distinct essence and meaning in itself. - Man's being is a by-product of his decisions created on a moment basis. - “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 [...] 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. [...] Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.” - Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism ## We are Condemned to be Free 1. If there is no designer (i.e., God), there is no intrinsic essence of human life, therefore there can be no human nature (what humans are supposed to be). 2. Instead, we must invent our purpose, our own “essence”. 3. We are “radically free”, radically free to define our essence but also free to choose, act, and even change our emotions. 4. Realizing we are free to choose means that we are entirely responsible for our lives, which creates angst - a feeling of anxiety or even despair. 5. To deny our radical freedom is what Sartre referred to as “bad faith”. 6. We act in bad faith any time we refuse to take responsibility for our actions, beliefs, or emotions. 7. He likened it to a *kind of self-delusion*. 8. In *Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology*, Sartre controversially claimed that even slaves are free since they could choose to run away or end their own lives. 9. To believe otherwise is to deny one's radical freedom to *act in bad faith*. ## Facticity - Sartre considered some of these concerns in his formulation of the being-for-itself. - He believed that there are certain facts about ourselves which we cannot change no matter how radically free we are, which make up our "facticity". - These conditions include where a person was born, their social class, and their bodily condition. - These form the background against which we make choices, the unchosen situation of the for-itself. ## Temporality - For Sartre, temporality refers to our connection with the past, present, and future. - Temporality is a process. - The past is what the being-for-itself has been. - The present is the being-for-itself being formed. - The future is projection, what the for-itself is not yet. - Our temporality is a unique feature of the being-for-itself. ## Defining Ourselves - We can choose to not let those things define us. - For example, if a person was bullied in school they can choose to transcend those past experiences in a way such that instead of shying away from the world they choose to become stronger and more courageous. - We can choose not to be defined by the stereotypes ascribed to us; instead, we define ourselves. ## Responsibility - Defining ourselves is a unique feature of Sartre's philosophy. - It is empowering, but also comes with responsibility. - For Sartre, there is no human nature for there is "no God to have a conception of it”. - Human nature implies that there is an essence of being human, which Sartre refuted. - Therefore, human nature is something we must individually decide upon. - We define what human nature is, and therein lies our responsibility. - If we choose to allow suffering and inequality in the world we are responsible. - If you know about inequality in your neighborhood and do nothing about it, you are defining human nature and are responsible for it. - To shy away from that responsibility would be bad faith. ## Synthetic Unity - According to Sartre, meaning emerges from our conscious interrelations with things in the world. - Take an illustration of a car, for example. - It is simply there, made up of matter. - Whatever meaning we ascribe to the object (e.g., that it is an “illustration” of a “car”) comes from our conscious relationship with that object. - The interesting point that Sartre raised, however, was that the illustration of the car did not exist just in the mind of the being-for-itself. - Rather, the illustration (e.g., of a "car") exists within the synthesis between the being-for-itself and the being-in-itself, whereby it could not exist without both. - For this reason, Sartre proposed that there are objective facts about the world that exist only within the relationship between the for-itself and the in-itself. ## Consciousness - Sartre helped to define some of the defining differences between conscious beings and things; therefore contributing to our understanding of ourselves. - He proposed ideas that not only relate to consciousness but also to how certain facts emerge between the conscious and the non-conscious. - Furthermore, his most significant contributions were about what it means to be a self, which he concluded to be one of no-thing-ness. - From nothing, we henceforth create ourselves in an image of our own making. - In doing so we find our freedom, which is radical and full of responsibilities. ## Group Activity - Group yourselves into five in a group and do the assignments during our off face to face classes. - Put your answers in white bond paper, typewritten, single spaced, 11 font size, times new roman. - Submit all assignments during the face to face meetings. - **Questions:** 1. How do you understand the being in itself? How is this different from the being for itself? Give examples in your experiences where these situations have been applied differently. 2. What do you understand by the thought that man's existence is determined by non-God beings but by the little choices made by man? 3. Discuss how Sartre described ‘man' as No-thingness? How do you relate this to yourself? 4. How is being in itself for say a house and being for itself established its meaning? What things or beings do you have in mind where the objective facts of beings exist in the relationships of being in itself and being for itself. How does consciousness come into play into these relationships? 5. How do we explain the idea that existence precedes essence?